D'vtsieoj  >f) 


Srcttoft 


CHRIST    AND   THE 

KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

S.  H.  HOOKE 


Christ  and 
The  Kingdom  of  God 


^  OF  PHWfiffc 


S.  H.  HOOKE 


%06iCAl 


Jesus  College,  Oxford,  and  Victoria  College, 
University  of  Toronto 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
S.  H.  Hooke 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


To  My  Wife 


FOREWORD 

The  existence  of  so  admirable  a  Bible  study  textbook  as 
Professor  Hogg's  "Christ's  Message  of  the  Kingdom"  makes 
it  necessary  that  I  should  offer  a  word  of  explanation  for  the 
raison  d'etre  of  this  book.  When  Professor  Hogg's  book 
came  out,  I  had  been  working  along  the  lines  here  laid  down 
for  several  years,  first  for  myself,  and  then  in  small  college 
circles  at  Oxford.  We  hailed  Professor  Hogg's  book  with 
joy,  and  used  it  largely  as  a  circle  text-book  in  Oxford.  But 
I  found  myself  that  the  book  seemed  to  call  for  a  companion 
or  supplementary  study  dealing  more  in  detail  with  the  life 
of  Christ.  In  this  book,  as  in  Professor  Hogg's,  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  the  central  thing.  But  this  book  is  confined  almost 
entirely  to  the  attempt  to  trace  out  in  the  life  of  Christ  the 
workings  of  the  principles  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  More 
especially  does  it  attempt  to  set  forth  Christ  as  man,  subjected 
to  the  conditions  of  his  time,  and  exhibiting  in  his  life  the 
reality  of  the  yoke  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  "learning  obedi- 
ence by  the  things  which  he  suffered."  Hence,  while  Pro- 
fessor Hogg's  book  deals  extensively  with  a  large  range 
of  questions  and  problems  arising  out  of  the  practical  bearing 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  Christian  life  as  a  whole,  this 
book  deals  intensively  and  more  purely  in  a  historical  way 
with  the  Christ  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  and  his  experience  of 
the  workings  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  his  own  life.  It 
takes  up  the  life  of  Christ  as  the  experimentum  cruris  of  the 
reality  of  "the  powers  of  the  age  to  come." 

A  sentence  of  Mr.  Glover's,  in  the  course  of  his  memorable 
address  at  the  Liverpool  Conference,  1913,  on  "The  Death  of 
Christ,"  still  rings  in  my  ears — "Was  he  God,  or  was  he 
Man,  you'd  give  anything  to  know!"  It  just  represents  the 
attitude  of  so  many  students  I  have  met.  Together  we  have 
wrestled  over  the  secrets  of  those  scanty  records  in  the  Syn- 
optic Gospels,  trying  to  find  how  men,  into  the  very  fiber  of 
whose  being  had  been  wrought  the  jealous  monotheism  of 
Israel,  should  have  been  forced  to  offer  to  a  man  whom  they 

vii 


viii  FOREWORD 

had  touched  and  handled,  and  seen  hanging  on  the  felon's 
gibbet,  the  worship  due  to  God.  Over  and  over  again  I  have 
seen  such  students  gradually  coming  to  the  realization  of 
Paul's  phrase,  "God  was  in  Christ."  A  great  deal  of  current 
theology  unconsciously  assumes  that  the  nature  of  the  Incarna- 
tion is  known,  that  we  can  say  with  certainty  what  is  or  what 
is  not  possible  to  God  in  Incarnation.  The  standpoint  from 
which  this  book  is  written  is  that  we  cannot  define  the  method 
or  the  manner  of  God's  becoming  man,  and  we  cannot  say  of 
any  particular  experience  in  the  life  of  Christ  that  it  is  not 
proper  to  God.  "Christ  died  to  bring  us  to  God,"  "God  was 
in  Christ."  Those  two  sentences  are  the  keynote  of  primitive 
Christianity,  and  the  point  of  departure  for  this  brief  study. 

I  should  like  to  add,  both  for  myself  and  for  many  students 
whom  I  know,  an  expression  of  sincere  gratitude  to  Professor 
Hogg  for  his  book.  He  will  probably  never  know  how  many 
students  have  been  decisively  helped  by  it. 


Since  the  above  was  set  up,  Mr.  Glover's  book,  "The  Jesus  of  History," 
has  appeared,  to  the  joy  of  all  students  of  the  life  of  Christ. 


FOREWORD  TO  THE  WEEKLY  STUDIES 

The  old  proverb  says  that  a  fool  may  ask  questions  which  it 
takes  a  wise  man  to  answer.  My  own  experience  is  that  to 
ask  the  right  questions  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  Further- 
more, experience  only  answers  slowly,  and  the  wise  man  learns 
that  there  is  often  more  profit  in  the  insistent  goading  of  an 
unanswered  question  than  in  the  answer  gained  without 
travail.  The  object  of  these  weekly  studies  is  to  suggest  ques- 
tions;  the  object  of  the  weekly  chapter  following  them  is  to 
suggest,  not  answers,  but  a  line  of  thought  along  which  some 
kind  of  answer  may  be  found.  In  using  the  book  for  circle 
study  there  is  no  need  for  the  leader  to  confine  himself  to  the 
questions  given  in  each  week's  study.  Other  questions  are 
sure  to  suggest  themselves,  either  to  him  or  to  members  of  the 
circle.  The  only  thing  needed  is  to  draw  out  the  right  ques- 
tions that  really  matter,  and  to  extinguish  the  others,  tactfully 
if  possible.  The  secret  of  success  in  Bible  study  circles  be- 
longs to  the  things  not  seen  but  eternal.  Sincerity,  patience, 
real  humility  of  mind,  and  prayer,  together  with  a  good  deal 
of  very  real  preparation,  are  at  least  some  of  the  things  to 
be  found  somewhere  in  the  circle.  If  nobody  has  begun  to 
think  about  the  subject  of  the  week's  study  until  an  hour 
before  the  circle  meets,  it  will  be  a  dreary  business,  and  the 
sooner  such  a  circle  has  a  millstone  tied  around  its  neck  and 
disappears  into  the  abyss,  the  better. 

So,  while  not  laying  down  any  rules  or  even  suggestions  for 
daily  study,  this  at  least  is  urged — that  any  student  using  this 
book  should  give  a  definite  and  if  possible  a  regular  time 
during  the  week  to  read  the  passages  given,  to  think  out  their 
implications,  and  to  make  clear  to  himself  his  own  position, 
and  possibly  his  own  ignorance,  on  the  points  raised  by  the 
questions.  The  leader,  and  possibly  members  of  the  circle, 
may  find  of  some  use  in  preparation  the  list  of  literature  given 
in  the  notes  to  each  week's  study.  If  possible,  all  the  New 
Testament  passages  should  be  read  in  Moffatt's  New  Trans- 
lation by  preference,  although  Weymouth  is  good.     But  for 

ix 


x        FOREWORD  TO  WEEKLY  STUDIES 

those  who  know  Greek,  the  systematic  use  of  the  Greek 
Testament  is  the  best  habit  to  form. 

The  plan  of  the  book  follows  the  main  crises  of  the  life  of 
Christ.  It  falls  into  four  divisions — I.  The  Preparation  for 
the  Ministry,  including  an  introductory  chapter  on  the  current 
expectation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  the  time  of  Christ; 
II.  The  First  Stage  of  the  Ministry  and  the  First  Crisis ;  III. 
The  Second  Stage  of  the  Ministry  and  the  Second  Crisis ; 
IV.  The  Final  Period  and  the  Passion.  If  the  book  is  used 
to  cover  a  period  of  two  years,  it  may  be  divided  conveniently 
at  the  end  of  the  second  division. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  book  is  intended  to  form  the  first 
of  a  series  of  three,  leading  on  to  the  ministry  of  the  Spirit, 
and  thence  to  a  sketch  of  the  early  Church  up  to  the  period 
of  the  great  creeds. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword vii 

Foreword  to  the  Weekly  Studies ix 

First  Division:   The  Preparation 

CHAPTER 

I.  Jewish  Ideas  in  the  Time  of  Christ  Concern- 
ing the  Kingdom  of  God 3 

II.  The  Childhood  of  Christ 9 

III.  The  Baptism  of  Christ 15 

IV.  The  First  Temptation 21 

V.  The  Second  Temptation 27 

VI.  The  Third  Temptation 33 

Second  Division:   The  First  Stage  of  the  Ministry 
and  the  First  Crisis 

VII.  The  First  Period  of  the  Ministry 41 

VIII.  The  First  Crisis.     The  Message  from  John  ...  47 

IX.  The  First  Crisis.    The  Yoke  of  the  Kingdom.  53 

Third  Division:  The  Second  Stage  of  the  Ministry 
and  the  Second  Crisis 

X.  The  Second  Period  of  the  Ministry 61 

XI.  The  Parables  of  the  Kingdom 67 

XII.  The  Second  Crisis.     The  Confession 73 

XIII.  The  Second  Crisis.     The  Confirmation 79 

XIV.  The  Transfiguration 85 

XV.  The  Resurrection  in  the  Mind  of  Christ 91 

Fourth  Division:   The  Final  Crisis 

XVI.  The  Way  to  Jerusalem.    The  Mind  of  the  Dis- 
ciples    97 

XVII.  The  Way  to  Jerusalem.     The  Mind  of  Christ.  103 

XVIII.  The  Triumphal  Entry 109 

XIX.  The  Withered  Fig  Tree 113 

XX.  The  Last  Crisis.     The  Supper  and  Afterwards  119 

XXI.  The  Last  Crisis.     Gethsemane 125 

XXII.  The  Cross 129 

XXIII.  The  Victory  of  the  Cross 133 

xi 


FIRST  DIVISION 
THE    PREPARATION 


CHAPTER    I 

Jewish  Ideas  in  the  Time  of  Christ  Concerning  the 
Kingdom  of  God 


STUDY  I 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Luke  1:15-18,  32,  68-79;   2:25-38;   3:4-17;   Matt.  20;  21; 
Mark  10:35-37;  Luke  13:23;  14:15. 

Notes  : 

This  is  an  introductory  study,  necessary  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  whole  background  of  thought  against  which 
the  life  of  Christ  stands  out.  The  student  will  certainly  need 
to  read  something  of  the  great  literature  that  is  rapidly 
growing  up  around  this  new  and  fascinating  subject.  It  is 
particularly  necessary  to  avoid  reading  back  into  the  Gospels 
and  even  into  the  sayings  of  Christ  ideas  which  belong  to  a 
much  later  and  more  theological  period  of  Christian  thought. 
A  little  study  will  show  two  main  things — first,  that  the 
expectation  of  the  actual  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  on 
earth  forms  the  keynote  of  Jewish  history  during  the  last 
two  centuries  B.  C.  and  the  first  century  A.  D. ;  and  second, 
that  there  were  many  ways  of  thinking  of  the  Kingdom, 
many  forms  in  which  the  hope  of  the  Kingdom  manifested 
itself,  varying  from  the  most  spiritual  to  the  most  material. 
The  following  books  will  be  helpful : 

Crawford  Burkitt:  "Jewish  and  Christian  Apocalypses." 
Charles :  "Eschatology,  Hebrew,  Jewish,  and  Christian." 
Oesterley:  "The  Doctrine  of  the  Last  Things." 
Oesterley :  "The  Evolution  of  the  Messianic  Idea." 
Scott :  "The  Kingdom  and  the  Messiah." 
Kirsopp  Lake:  "The  Stewardship  of  Faith." 

Questions  : 

1.  What  do  you  think  John  the  Baptist  meant  by  his  mes- 

sage, "the  Kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand"?     What  did 
his  hearers  understand  by  it? 

2.  From  what  sources  did  the  Jews  in  the  time  of  Christ 

draw  their  expectation  of  the  coming  Kingdom? 

3.  What  was  in  the  mind  of  the  speakers  in  Luke  13:23 

and  14:  15? 

4.  What  does  the  word  "salvation"  mean  in  Luke  1 :  68-79? 


CHAPTER  I 

Jewish  Ideas  in  the  Time  of  Christ 
Concerning  the  Kingdom  of  God 

Lagrange,  in  his  very  valuable  book,  "Le  Messianisme  chez 
les  Tuifs,"  has  described  the  closing  century  of  Jewish  national 
history  as  "Messianism  in  action."  The  phrase  sums  up  ad- 
mirably the  intense  flame  of  desire  for  the  Kingdom  of  God 
which  was  consuming  that  unhappy  nation.  It  is  impossible 
to  understand  the  keynote  of  Christ's  life  without  some 
appreciation  of  what  was  going  on  all  the  time  under  the 
surface  of  Jewish  life.  The  fires  are  extinct  and  cold  now, 
and  many  of  the  phrases  and  even  the  questions  in  the  Gos- 
pels—idle questions  they  seem  to  us  now— are  almost  mean- 
ingless, unless  by  an  effort  of  imaginative  sympathy  we  can 
make  them  glow  again  with  the  fire  of  Messianic  expectation. 
It  is  impossible  in  one  short  chapter  to  go  back  to  the  roots 
of  this  strange  and  unique  impulse  in  Jewish  national  history. 
Special  reference  may  be  made  to  pp.  5-10  of  Prof.  Kirsopp 
Lake's  brilliant  book,  "The  Stewardship  of  Faith,"  for  a  very 
clear  summary  of  the  development  of  the  Jewish  view  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God. 

We  must  limit  ourselves  here  to  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the 
different  forms  which  this  expectation  took  in  the  time  of 
Christ.  Several  important  points  will  come  up  again  for 
discussion  later  on  in  our  studies. 

The  first  circle  which  meets  us  over  and  over  again  in  the 
Gospels  is  that  of  the  Pharisees  who  are  generally  coupled 
with  the  Scribes,  the  professional  students  of  the  Torah. 
The  Pharisees  have  a  bad  name,  but  their  part  in  the  history 
of  Judaism  is  a  very  fine  one.  Paul  himself  is  a  proof  of 
what  Pharisaism  at  its  best  could  produce.    At  a  time  when 


6      CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

the  Jews  were  in  danger  of  merging  altogether  into  Hellenism, 
the  Pharisees  carried  on  the  work  of  the  old  Hasidim,  the 
Puritans  of  the  bad  days  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  and  asserted 
the  central  importance  of  the  Law.  While  there  were  various 
sects  among  the  Pharisees,  some  narrower,  some  more  liberal, 
and  various  shades  of  belief  existed  among  them  concerning 
the  precise  order  of  the  events  of  the  last  days,  all  agreed  on 
the  central  point  that  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
depended  on  the  keeping  of  the  Law.  So  much  was  this  the 
case  that  among  the  more  liberal  Jews  of  the  Dispersion  the 
glorification  of  the  Law  had  displaced  the  Messianic  hope. 
There  was  a  rabbinic  saying  current  in  various  forms,  to  the 
effect  that  if  all  Israel  could  only  keep  the  Law  perfectly  for 
a  single  day  Messiah  would  come.  Hence,  while  there  was 
much  bigotry  and  narrowness,  much  unreality  in  the  strict 
orthodoxy  of  the  Pharisees  with  which  Christ  clashed  so 
often,  yet  under  it  there  was  a  spirit  of  passionate  desire  for 
the  Kingdom  of  God  which  explains  much  that  now  seems 
absurd  to  us  in  the  meticulous  exactness  with  which  they 
sought  to  keep  the  letter  of  the  Law. 

Over  against  them  stand  the  Sadducees,  the  priestly  party, 
inheriting  the  prestige  and  power,  but  not  the  spirit,  of  the 
old  Maccabees.  Much  is  still  obscure  about  the  precise  reli- 
gious beliefs  of  the  Sadducees.  They  probably  regarded 
many  of  the  Pharisaic  beliefs  as  dangerous  innovations,  and 
considered  themselves  as  representing  the  old  conservative 
point  of  view.  But  as  we  see  them  in  the  Gospels,  their 
principal  anxiety  is  to  keep  the  continual,  suppressed  Messianic 
expectation  and  tension  from  breaking  out  into  a  flame  of 
revolt.  They  certainly  believed  in  the  coming  of  the  King- 
dom as  a  pious  hope;  it  was  to  come,  it  would  come  anyhow. 
Meanwhile,  it  was  no  good  to  get  excited.  They  enjoyed 
what  measure  of  power  was  left  to  the  nation,  and  grew  rich 
on  the  sale  of  temple  victims  and  the  system  of  exchange 
which  required  all  sacrificial  animals  to  be  bought  with  the 
temple  coinage.  They  stood  to  lose  these  things  if  any  ill- 
considered  outbreak  of  Messianism  should  bring  down  the 
heavy  hand  of  Rome  and  cause  the  temple  worship  to  be 
finally  suppressed.  Hence  the  Sadducees,  who  probably 
troubled  little  about  the  precise  nature  of  Christ's  teaching, 
grew  alarmed  at  once  when  things  began  to  look  threaten- 
ing  at   Jerusalem.     The   so-called   triumphal   entry,   and   the 


JEWISH  IDEAS  7 

cleansing  of  the  temple,  were  probably  the  historical  causes 
which  led  to  the  death  of  Christ. 

In  addition  to  these  two  parties,  there  was  another  of  which 
we  do  not  hear  so  much  in  the  Gospels,  but  which  is  probably 
referred  to  in  some  of  Christ's  most  characteristic  sayings. 
They  were  the  Zealots,  of  whom  at  least  one,  Simon  the 
Cananean  or  the  Zealot  (for  the  epithet  Cananean  is  the 
Aramaic  equivalent  of  the  Greek  form  frfrUTfc),  was  of  the 
company  of  the  Twelve.  They  were  impatient  both  of  the 
ineffectual  methods  of  the  Pharisees  and  of  the  masterly 
inactivity  of  the  Sadducees.  They  believed  in  an  appeal  to 
the  ordeal  of  battle.  They  wished  to  rise  against  the  might 
of  Rome  in  one  desperate  splendid  venture  and  stake  all  on 
the  intervention  of  God  at  the  last  moment.  They  had  their 
way  at  last,  and  the  final  destruction  of  Jerusalem  in  70 
A.  D.  was  the  result.  The  attention  of  New  Testament 
scholars  has  been  drawn  to  this  interesting  sect  of  late,  and 
it  is  probable  that  many  of  Christ's  sayings  against  the  use 
of  force  are  directed  against  the  Zealots,  with  whom  his 
own  disciples  would  have  much  sympathy.  Thus  we  find  a 
third  view  of  the  way  the  Kingdom  might  come. 

But  underneath,  amongst  the  common  people,  for  whom  the 
Pharisees  had  little  use,  there  had  grown  up  an  intense  and 
earnest  expectation  of  that  "divine  event"  which  seemed  to 
them  anything  but  "far  off."  They  had  fed,  not  only  on  the 
prophets,  but  on  a  literature  of  which  we  are  only  now  begin- 
ning to  understand  the  significance.  Books  like  first  and 
second  Enoch,  first  and  second  Baruch,  fourth  Ezra,  full  of 
visions  of  a  glorious  future  in  which  all  the  past  woes  of 
Israel  would  be  a  thousand  times  repaid,  nourished  their  hopes 
and  strengthened  their  faith.  Nor  was  this  hope  unethical, 
even  if  it  was  inevitably  material.  A  short  selection  of  typical 
passages  from  some  of  these  books  which  were  actually  cur- 
rent about  the  time  of  Christ,  given  at  the  end  of  this  book, 
will  show  the  character  of  these  hopes.  The  canticles  in  Luke 
1  are  thoroughly  representative  of  the  beautiful  and  quiet 
piety  of  that  unknown  and  humble  circle  that  waited  for 
redemption  in  Israel.  For  them  "salvation"  in  its  technical 
sense  included  two  things,  deliverance  from  their  enemies, 
and  forgiveness  of  their  sins.  How  these  two  things  could 
be  brought  together  in  one  great  act  of  divine  intervention 
was  the  problem  facing  the  circle  into  which  Christ  was  born 


8      CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

and  among  whom  he  grew  up.  We  shall  see  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  think  of  him  as  uninfluenced  by  all  these  currents  of 
thought.  This  was  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  came  to 
maturity,  and  unless  we  take  the  trouble  to  reconstruct  it  for 
ourselves  from  the  hints  of  the  Gospels,  plentiful  enough 
when  we  have  learnt  to  look  for  them,  and  from  the  apoc- 
alyptic literature  already  mentioned,  we  shall  not  have  the 
key  to  the  meaning  of  the  life  of  Christ. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Childhood  of  Christ 


STUDY  II 

Passage  for  Daily  Study  : 
Luke  2 :  40-52. 

Notes  : 

The  passage  for  this  week  is  short,  and  should  be  read  as 
often  as  possible  and  thought  over  carefully.  Consider  the 
meaning  of  Christ's  answer  to  his  mother.  Note  the  right 
rendering  of  his  words  given  in  the  chapter  on  this  subject. 
Consider  the  bearing  of  the  whole  incident  on  Christ's  mental 
and  spiritual  development. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  did  Christ  mean  by  his  answer  to  his  mother? 

2.  What  do  you  understand  by  the  statement  in  Luke  2 :  52, 

that  Jesus  grew  in  wisdom,  and  in  favor  with  God? 

3.  Was  the  thought  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  a  new  one 

in   the  time   of   Christ?      (Cf.    Deut.   32:   6;    Isaiah 
63:16;  64:8.) 

4.  W'hat  does  the  whole  story  convey  to  you  concerning 

the  personality  of  Jesus? 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Childhood  of  Christ 

In  our  last  study  we  tried  to  reconstruct  the  religious  back- 
ground of  Christ's  time,  its  complexity,  its  restlessness,  its 
mingled  optimism  and  pessimism.  We  saw  something  of  the 
nature  of  the  circle  of  choice  souls,  waiting  for  the  redemption 
of  Israel,  into  which  Christ  was  born.  We  do  not  think  much 
about  Christ's  childhood  and  its  relation  to  his  later  life, 
partly  because  we  have  so  little  information  about  it,  and 
partly  because  of  the  unnatural  way  in  which,  unconsciously, 
we  have  come  to  think  of  the  life  of  Christ. 

Yet,  if  the  human  life  of  Christ  was  real,  the  impressions 
and  lessons  of  his  childhood  formed  his  manhood.  In  the 
reading  for  the  week  occurs  the  passage,  "and  Jesus  advanced 
in  wisdom  and  age  (R.  V.)  and  in  favor  with  God  and  man." 
This  must  be  taken  at  its  full  face  value.  It  means  what  it 
says.  Jesus  learnt  at  home  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures, 
and  when  he  was  old  enough,  heard  the  Law  and  the  prophets 
read  in  the  synagogue  in  their  yearly  rotation.  He  learnt  in 
that  circle,  so  vividly  drawn  by  Luke,  to  think  of  the  coming 
Kingdom  of  God  as  no  dream,  but  a  glorious  certainty;  that 
is,  his  views  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  his  conception  of 
his  own  part  in  it  were  the  fruit  of  the  natural  process  of 
learning  and  study  and  maturer  meditation  as  he  grew  in  age. 

The  special  object  of  this  week's  study  is  to  read  with  a 
fresh  mind  the  one  incident  of  Christ's  childhood  which  has 
been  preserved.  Luke  took  pains  to  collect  all  the  informa- 
tion possible  from  the  best  sources.  He  must  have  had  access 
to  the  inner  circle  of  Christ's  relatives;  possibly  he  had  talked 
with  Mary,  the  mother  of  Jesus.  If  he  does  not  tell  us  more, 
it  is  most  likely  because  there  was  not  much  to  tell.  The 
stream  ran  quietly  but  deep.  The  verse  already  quoted  repre- 
sents the  uneventful  childhood  of  obedience. 

II 


12     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

Hence,  the  one  story,  laid  up  in  the  mother's  memory, 
puzzling  her  by  its  mystery,  challenges  us  to  gather  what  we 
may  from  it. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  repeat  the  details.  The  center  of  in- 
terest lies  in  the  child's  strange  answer,  so  baffling- to  his 
parents.  Perhaps  a  retranslation  may  help  towards  a  fresh 
reading  of  the  incident — "why  were  you  seeking  for  me? 
Were  you  not  aware  that  I  should  be  in  my  Father's  house?" 
In  the  first  place,  the  presence  of  the  child  among  the  rabbis 
and  his  interest  in  their  discussions  is  not  so  strange  as  it 
may  seem  to  us.  Similar  cases  might  be  cited  from  the  rabbin- 
ical literature.  We  have  to  think  of  the  child,  who  had  al- 
ready thought  and  pondered  over  what  his  parents  had  taught 
him  of  the  coming  Kingdom,  Elias  the  forerunner,  and  the 
Messiah,  listening  to  the  rabbis  talking  over  and  discussing 
these  subjects;  he  breaks  in  with  apt  questions  and  quotations 
and  amazes  them  by  the  evidence  of  his  interest  in  such 
things  and  his  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures.  Then  come  the 
troubled  parents,  and  the  mother's  natural  rebuke — "We  have 
been  looking  everywhere  for  you."  He  answers,  "Why,  I 
thought  you  would  be  sure  to  know  where  I  was,  in  my 
Father's  house." 

Later  on,  Jesus  said  to  his  disciples — "Except  ye  become  as 
little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  the  Kingdom  of  God."  I 
think  that  here  lies  the  point  of  the  story.  In  childhood 
spiritual  things  are  as  real  as  material  things.  When  we 
grow  older,  the  world  is  too  much  with  us  and  the  material 
things  are  so  much  more  real  to  us  that  we  need  the  pangs 
of  re-birth  to  give  us  entrance  again  into  the  spiritual  world. 
But  with  Jesus  it  was  not  so,  and  this  deep  simplicity  it  was 
that  baffled  his  parents.  They  had  taught  him  that  the 
Temple  was  God's  house,  their  Father's  house,  and  taught 
him  to  look  forward  to  the  time  when  as  "a  son  of  the  law" 
he  would  be  able  to  go  up  with  them  to  visit  and  to  worship 
at  that  glorious  place.  To  him  all  this  was  intensely  real, 
real  with  a  reality  of  which  they,  pious  people  though  they 
were,  knew  nothing,  a  reality  which,  as  we  shall  have  occa- 
sion to  notice,  grew  and  deepened  for  him  as  years  went  on. 
Hence  he  cannot  understand  why  they  should  have  hesitated 
for  a  moment  as  to  where  they  would  find  him.  He  supposes 
that  for  them,  as  for  him,  that  place  would  be  home. 

This  is  the  first  glimpse  into  the  consciousness  of  Christ, 


THE  CHILDHOOD  OF  CHRIST  13 

the  only  one  that  we  have  into  his  child-mind.  It  shows  us 
the  divine  simplicity  of  the  child,  our  only  door  into  the  King- 
dom of  God,  in  Christ.  We  see  Christ  receiving  spiritual 
realities  "as  a  little  child,"  and  in  childlike  simplicity  accept- 
ing them  as  real,  more  real  than  anything  else,  real  in  a  way  of 
which  his  parents  had  not  dreamed. 

At  the  very  outset,  then,  Christ's  life  confirms  to  us  one  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Kingdom.  That  is  what  this 
solitary  splendid  story  of  the  childhood  of  Jesus  gives  us.  He 
enters  in  by  the  "lowly  door"  into  the  spiritual  heritage  into 
which  as  Leader  and  Completer  of  the  Faith  he  was  to  bring 
us,  many  sons  unto  glory. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Baptism  of  Christ 


STUDY  III 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  3:13-17;  Mark  1:9-11;  Luke  3:21-22. 

Notes  : 

The  account  given  in  the  Gospel  of  Mark  clearly  implies 
that  the  vision  at  the  Baptism  was  for  Christ  alone.  The 
supplementary  account  in  the  fourth  Gospel  states  that  John 
the  Baptist  also  saw  at  least  part  of  the  vision.  It  is  possible 
that  the  incident  of  John's  hesitation  recorded  only  in 
Matthew  may  throw  light  on  the  account  given  in  the  fourth 
Gospel.  It  suggests  that  the  Baptist  shared  to  some  extent 
the  experience  of  Christ,  realizing  with  the  prophet's  sym- 
pathy and  sensitiveness  the  nature  of  his  own  act  and  of 
Christ's  decision,  and  entering  in  some  measure  into  the 
emotion  and  exaltation  and  inward  vision  of  Christ.  The 
point,  however,  does  not  affect  the  main  line  of  explanation 
taken  up  in  our  chapter,  but  is  mentioned  here  only  because 
the  question  is  sure  to  be  raised  in  discussion.  The  lines  along 
which  Christ's  experience  are  interpreted  here  will  also  throw 
light  on  the  Baptist's  experience  at  the  same  time. 

Questions  : 

1.  In  comparing  the  three  accounts  of  the  Baptism  what 

points  of  difference  strike  you  especially? 

2.  Do  the  experiences  of  the  prophets  throw  any  light  on 

Christ's     experience    at    the    Baptism?       (Compare 
Isaiah's  call). 

3.  From  what  source  do  you  consider  the  Evangelists  have 

drawn  their  account  of  the  experience  of  Christ  at 
the  Baptism? 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Baptism  of  Christ 

"He  told  it  not;  or  something  seal'd 
The  lips  of  that  Evangelist." 

The  silences  of  the  Gospel  history  are  sometimes  as  eloquent 
as  its  speech,  if  we  try  to  read  them.  There  is  a  silence  of 
about  sixteen  years  between  the  glimpse  into  the  mind  of  the 
child  Jesus  which  was  the  subject  of  our  last  study,  and  the 
more  prolonged  and  intense  light  which  breaks  for  us  upon  his 
mature  consciousness  in  the  story  of  his  baptism  and  temp- 
tation. Outwardly  these  years  were  probably  quiet  enough, 
but  we  have  to  think  of  them  as  related  to  the  events  we  are 
dealing  with  now.  During  these  years  that  passion  for  the 
Kingdom  of  God  which  was  to  carry  him  to  the  bitter  end  was 
being  kindled  and  nourished.  The  simplicity  and  intensity  of 
spiritual  grasp  which  is  the  keynote  of  the  story  of  the  finding 
in  the  Temple  was  maturing.  The  Father's  Kingdom  was 
growing  real  to  him  as  the  Father's  house  of  the  childhood 
story.  Many  things  in  the  prophet's  visions  of  the  future  and 
in  the  current  expectations  that  surged  all  round  him  must 
have  been  quietly  turned  over  in  his  mind,  and  not  a  few  ob- 
scure sayings  in  his  later  life  seem  to  throw  us  back  for  light 
upon  this  time  of  slowly  forming  purpose. 

Then  the  small  circle  of  the  life  at  Nazareth  was  stirred 
and  shaken  by  the  report  of  a  new  prophet,  with  a  message 
that  met  the  smouldering  desires  of  men's  hearts  and  drew 
them  after  him  to  the  Jordan's  banks.  The  message  that  the 
Kingdom  of  God  was  at  hand  must  have  come  like  a  trumpet 
call  to  Jesus.  He  left  his  home,  laying  down  forever  his 
workman's  tools,  and  mingled  with  the  crowd  that  listened 
to  the  Baptist's  message.  There  he  saw  people  of  the  class 
for  whom  the  religious  leaders  of  the  day  had  no  room  in 
their  vision  of  the  Kingdom — the  hated  publican,  the  harlots — 

17 


18     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

publicly  proclaiming  themselves  as  sinners.  One  who  above  all 
things  had  so  deep  a  sense  of  reality  must  have  felt  profoundly 
moved  by  the  sight  of  such  reality  shown  in  such  a  pathetic 
way.  These  people,  at  any  rate,  had  gone  beyond  pious 
phrases  and  smug  complacency,  they  were  hungering  and 
thirsting  for  righteousness.  For  them  at  least  the  Kingdom 
of  God  was  a  reality.  In  such  a  scene  his  patiently  nourished 
purpose  and  passion  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  found  an 
answer  perhaps  unexpected ;  he  saw  his  way,  made  the  first 
great  decision  of  his  life,  and  joined  himself  with  these  people 
who  sought  the  Kingdom  of  God.  The  greatness  of  the 
decision  is  best  measured  by  the  attendant  emotions  and  reac- 
tions. Here  we  come  upon  the  ground  that  can  be  rightly 
apprehended  only  if  we  are  willing  to  give  full  human  value 
to  the  experience  recorded.  It  is  necessary  to  see  first  that 
the  baptism  as  an  act  of  vital  decision,  the  experiences  im- 
mediately following  it,  and  the  temptations  ensuing,  are  all 
intimately  and  organically  connected,  just  as  the  act  of  deci- 
sion itself  stands  directly  related  to  the  period  of  formation  in 
Nazareth. 

This  is  a  point  which  has  already  been  urged  and  will  recur 
again  and  again,  that  the  more  frankly  and  fully  we  admit 
the  naturalness  and  humanness  of  Christ's  experiences,  the 
more  we  find  them  fall  under  the  laws  governing  our  own 
spiritual  life,  and  the  deeper  does  their  significance  become. 

First  of  all,  the  whole  scene  evidently  represents  the  crys- 
tallization in  Christ's  mind  of  all  his  previous  thought  about 
the  Kingdom;  all  he  had  pondered  over  is  brought  to  the 
sharp  focal  point  of  clear  vision  by  the  challenge  to  action. 
The  Kingdom  was  at  hand ;  here  were  people,  not  Pharisees, 
not  Sadducees,  but  publicans  and  harlots,  responding  with  the 
witness  of  deepest  sincerity.  Here,  in  stepping  into  Jordan, 
he  feels  himself,  so  to  speak,  stepping  into  the  swift  cur- 
rent of  the  divine  purpose,  committing  himself  to  it  in  such 
company  as  this  for  whatever  issue  God  might  have  for  them 
all.    It  was  a  great,  an  immense  act  of  decision. 

The  testimony  of  the  lives  of  those  called  saints  shows 
clearly  the  law  of  relation  between  the  three  things  we  have 
to  deal  with  here  in  the  experience  of  Christ.  We  see  that  a 
focal  point  of  decision  is  never  a  cold  and  bloodless  thing,  it  is 
always  hot,  white  hot,  it  is  always  accompanied  by  intense 
emotion  and  clearness  of  spiritual  vision.    The  senses  are  for 


THE  BAPTISM  OF  CHRIST  19 

the  time  preternaturally  sharpened,  sensitive  to  the  vibra- 
tions of  the  spiritual  world  where  we  are  so  little  at  home  by- 
nature.  Further,  the  moment  of  emotion  and  insight  is  so 
intense  that  it  can  be  expressed  afterwards  only  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  usual  channels  of  sensation,  such  as  sight  or 
hearing.  And  lastly,  the  moment  of  exaltation  is  brief,  it 
passes,  and  is  always  followed  by  reaction  and  depression. 

So  we  find  here  with  Christ.  The  decision,  whose  great- 
ness we  often  fail  to  grasp,  especially  in  its  relation  to  the  gen- 
eral attitude  of  the  time,  was  accompanied  by  a  moment  of 
intense  spiritual  exaltation  and  vision.  He  knew,  as  the  saints 
know,  that  he  had  entered  the  path  that  God  meant  him  to 
follow,  he  was  profoundly  conscious  of  the  Father's  approval 
of  his  act  of  decision.  He  felt  in  a  new  and  intenser  way  the 
significance  of  the  fact  that  he  had  grasped  as  a  child,  the 
fact  of  Sonship,  and  he  felt  the  sense  of  power.  He  was 
committed,  with  this  strange  company,  to  the  realization  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God ;  that  would  need  power,  God's  power, 
and  with  that  power  he  felt  himself  endued.  So  the  vision 
passed,  the  heavens  closed  again.  Mark  uses  the  vivid  word 
that  perhaps  represents  the  personal  touch  of  experience, 
"he  saw  the  heavens  rending."  Heaven  and  earth  were 
strangely  near  at  that  moment  of  mystic  exaltation. 

We  do  not  always  stop  to  think  and  ask  where  the  informa- 
tion came  from  about  these  things.  But  if  this  was  the  spe- 
cial personal  experience  of  Christ,  perhaps  dimly  shared  and 
partially  reflected  in  the  mind  of  the  Baptist  alone,  it  must 
have  been  told  by  Jesus  himself  to  his  disciples  when  he  saw 
they  would  need  it.  Decision  would  have  to  come  for  them 
as  for  him,  and  he  must  have  told  them,  in  such  symbolic 
language  as  the  prophets  had  used  and  they  would  under- 
stand, what  had  come  to  him  after  the  great  decision  had  been 
made.  He  must  have  told  them,  too,  about  the  reaction,  the 
struggle  that  followed,  but  with  this  we  shall  deal  in  our 
next  studies. 


CHAPTER   IV 
The  First  Temptation 


STUDY  IV 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt    4:1-4;    Mark    1:12-13;    Luke    4:1-4,    22-28;    Heb. 
2:  18;  4:  15. 

Notes  : 

The  student  may  find  help  from  Sanday's  "Outlines  of  the 
Life  of  Christ,"  Latham's  "Pastor  Pastorum,"  and  Neville 
Talbot's  "The  Mind  of  the  Disciples,"  but  the  great  thing  is 
to  read  and  reread  the  actual  passages  psychologically  con- 
nected with  the  Baptism. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  is  the  connection,  if  any,  between  the  Baptism  and 

the  Temptation? 

2.  What  does  the  passage  in  Hebrews  4:  15  imply? 

3.  What  constituted  the  point  of  attack  in  the  first  temp- 

tation ? 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  First  Temptation 

In  his  book,  "The  Gospel  History  and  Its  Transmission," 
Professor  Crawford  Burkitt  remarks,  "Our  Gospels  are  very- 
far  from  being  a  sort  of  psychological  novel  with  Jesus 
Christ  for  hero."  The  remark  is  just  and  necessary.  Some 
of  the  best  known  of  the  liberal  Protestant  lives  of  Christ  are 
little  else.  But  unless  we  are  to  give  up  any  attempt  to 
understand  the  significance  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  we  must  try 
to  construct  from  the  Gospels,  the  first  three  in  particular, 
some  coherent  view  of  the  reason  why  Christ  did  things;  some 
broad  conception  of  his  outlook  on  life,  which  shall  be  at  once 
psychologically  possible,  true  to  historical  conditions,  and 
such  as  may  help  us  to  understand  why  the  first  great  theo- 
logian of  the  Church  could  say  "God  was  in  Christ." 

Now  in  dealing  with  the  Baptism  and  Temptation,  the  last 
of  these  three  points  has  been  principally  in  view  in  most  of 
the  interpretations  of  the  Church.  Chiefly  as  the  result  of 
the  great  doctrinal  controversies  of  the  early  centuries  of  its 
history,  the  Church  has  emphasized  only  one  side  of  Christ, 
the  divine.  In  Mr.  Rawlinson's  words,  "There  has  been  a 
tendency  to  treat  the  Incarnation  as  a  Theophany ;  to  think  of 
the  historic  Christ,  in  other  words,  as  simply  a  manifestation 
of  Godhead  in  human  flesh,  and  to  ignore  the  completeness 
and  genuineness  of  His  manhood." 1 

Hence  many  incidents  in  the  life  of  Jesus  have  been  dealt 
with  as  flashes  of  that  inner  divine  consciousness  which  was 
assumed  to  exist  alongside  of  his  human  consciousness,  and 
any  attempt  to  explain  them  as  arising  out  of  the  laws  of 
human  mentality  and  the  historical  conditions  has  been  ex- 
cluded as  irreverent.    Without  assuming  any  particular  posi- 


1  Dogma,  Fact,  and  Experience,  by  A.  E.  J.  Rawlinson,  p.  113. 

23 


24     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

tion,  our  object  is  to  see  if,  by  attempting  to  interpret  such 
incidents  in  Christ's  life  as  the  Baptism  and  Temptation 
entirely  from  the  human  standpoint,  they  do  not  become  more 
real,  intelligible,  and  significant  for  our  own  spiritual  life.  I 
wish  to  say  quite  frankly  that  there  is  no  thought  of  dogma- 
tizing here,  but  simply  an  endeavor  to  set  out  what  the  mean- 
ing of  the  life  of  Christ  has  come  to  be  for  oneself. 

Now  in  dealing  with  the  Temptation  of  Christ  it  is  spe- 
cially necessary  that  we  should  seek  to  understand  the  reality 
of  the  Temptation,  its  relation  to  the  actual  circumstances  in 
which  Christ  found  himself,  and  why  it  was  a  "temptation"  at 
all.  It  is  so  necessary  because  here,  if  anywhere,  the  life  of 
Christ  must  have  true  human  meaning.  So  the  writer  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  felt,  and  he  surely  reflected  the  mind 
of  the  early  Church,  when  he  said,  "who  was  in  every  respect 
tempted  after  the  same  fashion  as  we  are,  without  sin."  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if  the  temptations  of  Christ  were 
unreal,  then  this  part  of  Christ's  experience  is  both  utterly 
unintelligible  and  utterly  valueless  for  our  own  experience. 
Taking  up  then  the  line  of  interpretation  begun  in  our  last 
chapter,  we  find  the  decision  accompanied  by  intense  exalta- 
tion and  vision  and  followed  by  reaction.  It  is  the  reaction 
with  which  we  have  now  to  deal. 

The  sense  of  the  tremendous  issues  hanging  on  the  decision 
just  taken  compels  Jesus  to  seek  retirement  and  solitude.  In 
this  solitude,  during  long  days  of  fasting  and  nights  of  vigil 
and  prayer,  Christ  faced  the  question  of  the  future.  The  ac- 
count of  the  Baptism  and  its  experience,  coming  as  it  must 
have  done  from  Christ  himself,  shows  that  he  felt  the  event 
to  be  a  crisis  in  his  life.  It  is  from  the  Temptation  that  we 
gather  the  nature  of  the  crisis. 

The  opening  words  of  the  first  temptation,  as  we  call  it — 
though  really  it  is  all  one  temptation  passing  through  succes- 
sive and  related  phases — show  that  it  is  the  direct  outcome  of 
the  experience  at  the  Baptism.  "Thou  art  my  beloved  Son" 
were  the  words  in  which  Christ  expressed  his  experience,  his 
consciousness  of  God.  "If  thou  be  the  Son  of  God"  directly 
challenges  and  questions  this  experience.  There  is  a  struggle 
in  the  mind  of  Christ.  It  takes  this  form,  the  natural  result 
of  reaction  after  strain  and  exaltation,  of  a  questioning  of  the 
reality  and  value  of  this  spiritual  experience  through  which 
he  had  just   passed.     It   is   evident   that  the  great   question 


THE  FIRST  TEMPTATION  25 

before  the  mind  of  Christ  was  the  nature  of  his  appeal  to 
those  among  whom  his  mission  lay.  It  is  the  age-long  strug- 
gle of  the  prophet's  soul  at  the  outset  of  his  mission,  "They 
will  say  the  Lord  hath  not  appeared  unto  thee,"  "show  me  a 
sign  that  thou  talkest  with  me."  In  face  of  the  deeply  felt 
sense  of  the  narrowness,  the  hardness,  the  blindness  of  those 
to  whom  he  must  go  with  the  message  of  God,  the  prophet, 
the  sent  one  of  God,  will  always  feel  first  of  all  the  pre- 
cariousness,  the  apparent  inadequacy  of  his  own  experience 
of  God  as  the  ground  of  his  mission.  Christ  felt  what  the 
prophet  had  felt.  In  the  reaction,  the  depression,  he  real- 
izes how  seemingly  slight  a  ground  of  appeal  he  has,  and  the 
whole  issue  is  faced  and  fought  first  of  all  on  this  point,  "Is 
that  experience  of  God,  profoundly  and  movingly  felt  at  the 
Baptism,  sufficient  ground  for  me  to  go  on,  to  go  out  and  face 
this  people  with?" 

We  saw  that  the  experience  was,  so  to  speak,  a  complex  one ; 
the  sense  of  the  nearness  of  heaven,  the  approval  of  the 
Father  sealing  his  decision,  was  accompanied  by  a  sense  of 
power  in  filling  him  for  the  work  before  him.  Here  lay  the 
psychological  point  of  the  Temptation.  It  is  the  form  in  which 
to  prophets  and  saints,  the  temptation  has  most  often  come. 
It  is  only  those  who  face  the  venture  of  faith  who  know 
such  temptations,  and  Christ,  the  leader  and  completer  of  the 
faith,  knew  them  to  the  utmost.  John  Bunyan  in  his  "Grace 
Abounding,"  has  given  a  classic  example  of  this  temptation 
in  his  own  experience.  He  tells  how  when  he  was  struggling 
in  the  darkness,  longing  to  know  that  he  was  a  child  of  God, 
but  unable  to  find  certainty,  he  was  walking  alone  one  day 
in  the  fields,  wrestling  with  his  doubts  and  fears.  As  he 
walked,  he  came  to  a  pool  of  water  right  across  his  path.  He 
stopped  and  began  to  revolve  such  things  as  these  in  his 
mind:  "If  I  am  a  son  of  God  then  God's  power  is  at  my  dis- 
posal, He  will  do  whatever  I  ask  Him.  I  have  only  then  to 
command  this  pool  to  dry  up  to  prove  whether  I  really  am 
a  child  of  God  or  not."  So  he  stood  hesitating  whether  to 
put  everything  to  the  proof  by  this  test,  dreading  the  result 
and  yet  longing  to  be  out  of  his  misery.  At  last  he  decided 
to  stake  everything  on  the  test,  and  ordered  the  pool  to  dry 
up.  Of  course  it  remained  where  it  was.  and  the  wretched 
man  was  plunged  into  the  depths  of  despair  for  many  months 
before  he  finally  found  peace. 


26     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

So  here  the  precise  occasion  lay  to  hand,  and  the  point 
was  the  same.  The  sense  of  power,  the  sense  that  in  sealing 
his  decision  with  approval  the  Father  had  entrusted  to  him  the 
power  of  the  Kingdom,  was  a  part  of  the  experience  in  ques- 
tion. If  the  sense  of  endowment  with  power  was  real,  then 
the  rest  of  the  experience  would  be  real,  and  what  could  be 
simpler  than  to  settle  the  whole  issue  by  using  the  power  to 
meet  the  needs  of  the  moment?  Here  we  find  the  uniqueness 
of  Christ.  He  saw  (and  his  use  of  the  old  passage  in  Deut. 
8 : 3,  shows  how  he  read  the  Scriptures — not  in  the  letter  but 
in  the  spirit)  that  spiritual  experience,  the  soul's  experience  of 
God,  was  the  ultimate  reality  in  human  life,  not  to  be  proved 
by  any  purely  physical  manifestations. 

The  word  going  out  of  God's  mouth,  the  direct  experience 
of  God,  was  what  man  must  live  by.  So  Christ  fought  the 
issue  there  of  the  first  great  crisis  of  spiritual  experience,  and 
vindicated  forever  the  reality,  beyond  proof,  of  the  life  of 
the  spirit.  The  particular  occasion  and  circumstance  of  the 
crisis  was  temporary,  and  arose  out  of  the  historical  con- 
ditions of  Christ's  time,  but  the  principle  at  stake,  made  good 
by  Christ,  is  eternal. 


CHAPTER   V 
The  Second  Temptation 


STUDY  V 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 

Matt.  4:5-7;   Luke  4:9-12;   Mai.   3:1;  John  7:27;   Matt. 
16:1;  Mark  8:11;  Luke  11:16. 

Notes  : 

Observe  the  variation  in  order  between  Matthew  and  Luke, 
and  consider  which  of  the  two  seems  to  you  the  original 
sequence.  The  question  of  the  literal  truth  of  the  narrative, 
e.g.,  the  actual  carrying  of  Christ  to  the  temple  by  the  devil, 
may  be  partly  discussed  here,  but  fuller  discussion  should 
be  left  if  possible  to  the  next  study,  as  already  suggested. 
Compare  for  the  particular  instance  mentioned  Ezek.  3:14; 
8:3;  and  1 1 :  24. 

Questions  : 

1.  Which  of  the  Gospels  appears  to  you  to  represent  the 

original  order  of  the  temptations? 

2.  How   do  you  understand  the   statement  that  the   devil 

placed  Christ  on  a  pinnacle  of  the  temple? 

3.  What    constituted    the    point    of    attack    in    the    second 

temptation  ? 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Second  Temptation 

The  second  phase  of  the  Temptation  follows  naturally  after 
the  first.  It  also  brings  us  closer  to  the  contemporary  con- 
ditions of  the  Messianic  expectation,  and  shows  more  clearly 
the  lines  upon  which  Christ's  mind  was  moving.  The  struggle 
may  be  conceived  as  continuing  in  this  way.  Christ  takes 
his  stand  upon  the  ultimate  reality  of  spiritual  experience, 
his  own  in  particular.  It  suffices  for  him.  No  sign  or  mani- 
festation of  power  can  make  it  more  real  to  him. 

But  now  the  question  arises  whether  some  manifestation 
of  divine  power  is  not  necessary  to  show  the  people,  his  own 
people,  who  he  is.  Spiritual  experience,  inward  conviction  of 
his  relationship  to  God  and  of  his  mission,  may  suffice  for  him, 
but  will  it  suffice  for  them?  Here  again  the  current  of 
Christ's  thoughts  falls  into  Old  Testament  channels  and  shows 
us  an  Old  Testament  expectation  which  had  been  developed 
along  familiar  apocalyptic  lines.  In  Mai.  3:1,  we  have  the 
prophecy,  "The  Lord  whom  ye  seek  shall  suddenly  come  to 
his  temple,"  and  reflected  in  various  passages  in  the  Gospels, 
as  well  as  in  numerous  apocalyptic  passages,  we  find  the  belief 
that  Messiah  would  suddenly  appear  in  the  temple  or  in  the 
heavens  above  Jerusalem.  In  John  7 :  27,  one  of  the  difficulties 
which  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem  are  represented  as  feeling,  with 
regard  to  the  identification  of  Jesus  with  the  Messiah,  is  that 
even-one  knows  where  Jesus  comes  from,  whereas  the  popular 
belief  about  Messiah  was  that  his  coming  must  be  super- 
natural and  sudden.  The  same  point  is  reflected  in  the 
repeated  request  put  to  Christ  both  by  Pharisees  and  Sad- 
ducees  that  he  should  show  them  a  sign  from  heaven.  What 
they  sought  was  not  such  miracles  of  healing  as  they  were 
already  abundantly  familiar  with,  but  some  such  sign  as 
would  prove  that  he  came  down  from  heaven.     Here  in  this 

29 


30     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

temptation  we  find  Christ's  sense  of  such  a  belief  among  his 
people,  and  his  consciousness  or  belief  that  the  experience  he 
had  just  been  through  meant  that  he  was  marked  out  by 
God  for  a  special  position  in  the  Kingdom,  which  could  only 
be  that  of  Messiah.  Hence  the  suggestion  is  that  he  must 
show  a  sign  from  heaven,  if  he  is  to  be  recognized  as  the 
Person  marked  out  by  God  to  bring  in  the  Kingdom. 

With  the  swiftness  of  thought  he  is  transported  to  the 
Temple,  now  so  familiar  to  him,  the  scene  of  his  first  vivid 
boyhood  impression.  He  sees  again,  as  from  the  lofty  wall  of 
the  outer  court,  the  busy  throngs  of  worshipers,  and  pic- 
tures to  himself  the  rapture  and  enthusiasm  with  which  he 
would  be  received  by  them  if  he  should  suddenly  appear 
amongst  them  descending,  as  though  upborne  by  angels,  into 
their  midst. 

The  suggestion  is  striking,  and  the  temptation  subtle  enough. 
There  is  Scripture  sanction  both  for  the  particular  form  of 
the  expectation,  and  for  angelic  support  if  such  a  venture 
were  made. 

But  the  same  clearness  of  vision,  always  undimmed  in 
Christ  when  it  was  a  question  of  the  way  of  the  Spirit,  showed 
him  that  if  he  had  found  for  himself  that  the  Father's  way 
of  revelation  was  purely  spiritual ;  if  he  himself  could  learn 
who  he  was  only  by  way  of  spiritual  experience,  no  other  way 
was  possible  for  others.  They  must  come  to  know  him,  and 
knowing  him  learn  what  the  Kingdom  was  to  be,  by  the  same 
way,  not  easy  save  to  little  children,  the  way  of  spiritual  expe- 
rience. 

It  may  be  that  Christ  did  not  fully  realize  all  the  conse- 
quences yet  of  such  a  decision,  the  divergence  from  the  com- 
mon way  of  thinking.  That  we  shall  see  later.  But  this 
phase  of  the  Temptation  issues  in  the  further  victory  of  a 
decision  that  if  God's  way  for  him  was  the  way  of  experience, 
living  by  the  word  going  out  of  God's  mouth,  then  it  must 
be  so  for  others.  The  old,  old  demand  for  a  sign — "Is  the 
Lord  among  us  or  not?" — was  just  tempting  God,  putting  Him 
to  a  test  which  proved  nothing  but  the  doubt  and  faint- 
heartedness of  those  who  put  the  test.  "Thou  shalt  not  tempt 
the  Lord  thy  God." 

So  once  more  far-reaching  gain  is  made  by  Christ's  deci- 
sion. The  full  consequences  are  hardly  realized  even  now 
by  the  Church.     Her  history  shows  how  often  she  has  pre- 


THE  SECOND  TEMPTATION  31 

ferred  flesh  and  blood  methods,  rather  than  the  way  of  the 
Spirit. 

The  outcome,  then,  of  the  Temptation  so  far  is  that  Christ, 
looking  out  upon  the  work  that  lies  before  him,  considering 
the  question  of  the  ground  of  his  appeal  and  the  means  of 
enforcing  it,  chooses  deliberately,  yet  not  calmly,  but  under 
tremendous  stress  of  conflict,  that  the  way  into  the  Kingdom 
for  himself  and  for  others  shall  be  the  deepest,  truest,  and 
indeed  the  only  way,  the  way  of  spiritual  experience.  People 
could  not  be  forced  into  the  knowledge  of  these  things.  There 
must  be  deliberate  acceptance.  The  way  was  strait  and  the 
door  narrow,  as  Christ  came  to  realize  more  and  more  in  the 
days  to  come.    Men  must  agonize  to  enter. 

One  further  point  that  comes  out  here  is  that  we  have  in 
the  mind  of  Christ  a  deliberate  rejection  of  the  current  view 
of  miracles,  as  "signs"  intended  to  "prove"  some  spiritual 
reality  intellectually.  Whatever  miracles  were  for  Christ, 
and  whatever  he  used  them  for,  at  least  he  did  not  use  his 
power  to  prove  his  Messiahship.  That  is  clearly  shown  by  the 
first  two  phases  of  the  Temptation. 


CHAPTER   VI 

The  Third  Temptation 


STUDY  VI 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  4:8-11;  Luke  4:5-8;   Psalm  72:8-11;   Isa.  9:6,   7; 
Zech.  9:9,  10. 

Notes  : 

In  this  concluding  study  a  number  of  loose  ends  may  be 
gathered  up.  Some  elasticity  should  be  allowed  here,  and  if 
the  discussion  is  good,  and  members  wish  to  continue  it,  the 
subject  may  easily  be  carried  into  a  fresh  week,  before  start- 
ing the  second  division  of  the  whole.  For  some  of  the  points 
raised  the  student  will  find  Sanday's  "Personality  in  Christ 
and  Ourselves,"  and  McDowall's  "Evolution  and  the  Need 
of  Atonement"  helpful,  also  commentaries  on  special  pas- 
sages quoted.  But  avoid  too  much  use  of  commentaries;  on 
the  whole  they  confuse. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  is  the  final  point  of  attack  in  the  last  temptation? 

2.  From  what  source  do  you  consider  the  evangelists  have 

drawn   their   information   as    to    the   Temptation    of 
Christ? 

3.  Consider   whether   in   the   growth   of   later   legend   the 

Church  could  have  invented  the  story  of  the  Tempta- 
tion. 

4.  What  bearing  has  the  Temptation  of  Christ  upon  the 

spiritual  life  of  a  Christian? 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Third  Temptation 

We  have  seen  that  the  very  conflict,  the  very  fact  that  there 
was  temptation  in  the  suggestions  refused  by  Christ,  shows  the 
divergence  from  the  consensus  of  current  opinion.  Nothing 
is  harder  than  for  a  sensitive  mind,  unbrutalized  by  misuse 
of  power,  to  take  a  course  that  runs  counter  to  convictions 
hallowed  and  sanctioned  by  the  associations  of  the  past.  In 
this  case  Christ  felt  that  even  the  Scriptures  themselves  might 
be  used  against  him.  But  the  full  weight  of  this  pressure  of 
what  we  may  call  "pious  opinion"  comes  last.  Christ  must 
have  realized,  if  only  in  part,  that  such  means  as  his  choice 
implied  would  make  it  hard  for  the  Kingdom  to  come.  He 
was  throwing  a  great  burden  on  God,  so  to  speak,  and  also 
a  great  burden  on  man. 

There  were  the  hard  facts  of  contemporary  history.  The 
Romans  were  masters  of  the  world.  The  Jews  were  a  tiny 
subject  people,  enjoying  the  remnant  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty  only  at  the  pleasure  of  the  Romans.  How  far  would 
the  method  of  spiritual  experience,  the  individual  reception 
of  a  spiritual  message,  go  toward  removing  this  great  mate- 
rial mountain  that  barred  the  way  to  a  realization  of  the 
age-long  Messianic  dreams?  And  then  there  swept  before 
him  the  old  vision  of  the  prophets,  the  world-wide  Kingdom, 
Zion  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth,  the  nations  bringing  their 
glory  and  honor  into  her,  a  Messiah  ruling  in  righteousness, 
and  all  kings  serving  him.  How  could  such  a  kingdom  ever 
be  realized  save  by  methods  such  as  the  Zealots  advocated, 
and  such  as  had  been  already  vindicated  in  the  glorious 
episode  of  the  Maccabean  rising?  How  puny  and  ineffective 
seemed  the  way  of  the  Spirit!  If  the  prophets  were  not  too 
pious  and  spiritual  to  think  of  a  warrior  Messiah,  of  a  day 
of  battle  and  confused  noise,  and  of  garments  rolled  in  blood, 

35 


36     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

why  should  he  be  superior  to  them?  He  need  only  use  the 
temporal  weapons  of  revolt  and  war  to  crush  the  Romans, 
then  let  spiritual  means  have  their  place.  We  seem  to  have 
met  the  suggestion  in  our  own  day.  The  crisis  here  was 
perhaps  the  most  acute  of  all.  It  was  not  so  much  the  ques- 
tioning of  the  value  of  some  part  of  his  experience,  as  facing 
the  consequences  of  choosing  the  path  which  his  previous 
preparation  in  Nazareth,  reenforced  by  this  immense  expe- 
rience, pointed  out.  There  is  no  "if  thou  be"  in  this  tempta- 
tion, but  a  tremendous  "if  thou  wilt."  It  is  the  final  choice 
of  one  path  and  the  final  rejection  of  the  other.  But  the  path 
from  which  he  was  turning  seemed  to  have  so  much  in  its 
favor.  Stated  in  its  nakedness,  the  suggestion  of  falling 
down  and  worshipping  the  devil  hardly  seems  to  offer  a  "temp- 
tation" to  Christ.  But  it  is  Christ's  own  way  of  putting  it — 
he  told  the  story.  At  such  a  time  things  are  seen  in  high 
lights,  there  are  no  half  tones,  all  is  sharp  black  and  white. 
And  the  path  which  involved  such  methods  of  force  as  the 
Zealots  invoked  to  establish  the  material  earthly  kingdom 
seemed  to  Christ,  as  he  saw  things  in  that  fierce  light,  the 
final  sin  of  denying  God.  The  same  spirit  that  spoke  in  Luther 
at  Worms  in  those  great  words  "here  I  stand,  I  can  do  no 
other,  God  help  me,"  spoke  in  Christ  when  he  said,  "Thou 
shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  Him  only  shalt  thou 
serve."  Christ  threw  the  responsibility  back  on  God;  if  the 
Kingdom  was  to  come  as  the  prophets  and  poets  of  Israel 
had  dreamed,  then  that  was  God's  business.  For  him  the  only 
thing  was  to  do  God's  will  as  he  saw  it,  in  God's  way.  That 
was  the  whole  of  life  for  him. 

And  so  light  breaks,  heaven  is  near  again  with  angels 
ascending  and  descending  as  of  old — 

"The  angels  keep  their  ancient  places, 
Turn  but  a  stone  and  start  a  wing; 
'Tis  ye,  'tis  your  estranged  faces 
That  miss  the  many-splendored  thing !" 

The  path  is  chosen,  and  the  time  of  preparation  is  ended. 
Here  ends  the  first  part  of  our  study.  But  there  are  one  or 
two  points  to  be  gathered  up,  which  were  intentionally  passed 
over  in  order  not  to  draw  off  attention  from  the  central  line 
of  explanation. 


THE  THIRD  TEMPTATION  37 

First  there  is  the  question,  both  in  the  Baptism  and  in  the 
Temptations,  of  the  literal  interpretation  of  the  account.  Our 
Western  minds  are  so  constituted  that  we  feel  unhappy  if  we 
are  deprived  of  tangible,  sensible  data.  We  are  tempted  to 
feel  that  if  the  voice  of  God  was  not  actually  heard  speaking 
in  Aramaic  to  Christ,  if  there  was  not  an  actual  rent  in  the 
vault  of  heaven,  and  an  actual  dove  seen  hovering  over  and 
settling  on  Christ,  we  have  been  defrauded  of  reality,  the  thing 
was  not  really  true.  Yet  the  very  point  of  the  temptations,  the 
very  victory  Christ  won,  was  the  assertion  that  the  things  of 
the  spirit,  spiritual  experience,  are  more  real,  not  less  real, 
than  the  things  of  sense. 

When  it  came  to  telling  the  story,  nothing  was  more  natural 
than  that  Christ,  in  describing  the  whole  experience  at  the 
Baptism  and  after,  should  clothe  it  in  such  imagery  and 
symbols  as  the  prophets  had  used  in  describing  their  own  expe- 
riences. It  is  hard  to  think  of  Christ  putting  his  experiences 
into  the  language  of  modern  psychological  analysis. 

Then  there  is  the  perpetual  question,  about  which  I  do 
not  wish  to  say  much,  of  the  relation  of  temptation  to  the 
sinlessness  of  Christ.  Xow  the  main  thing  is  that  the  early 
Church  regarded  the  Temptation  as  real.  The  triumph  for 
them  lay,  and  rightly,  not  in  the  fact  that  he  could  not  sin,  but 
that  he  did  not  sin. 

The  fact  is,  we  think  still  of  sin  as  something  material,  like 
a  soil  or  taint,  inhering  in  a  person. 

But  we  are  coming  to  think,  indeed  we  are  being  forced  to 
think,  in  terms  of  evolution.  And  we  are  coming  to  see  that 
sin,  whether  racial  or  individual,  is  essentially  bound  up  with 
choice.  The  whole  trend  of  evolution  lies  in  the  ever  increas- 
ing introduction  of  freedom,  and  choices  made  at  first  un- 
consciously, blindly,  become,  as  the  race  ascends,  more  and 
more  conscious  and  the  moral  element  enters.  Choice  becomes 
significant  in  a  new  way.  Those  who  wish  to  read  along  the 
modern  line  of  Christian  thought  in  this  profoundly  interest- 
ing and  difficult  subject  are  referred  to  the  book  by  Mr. 
McDowall  mentioned  in  the  Xotes  to  Study  VI.  We  have 
not  space  to  discuss  it  fully  here.  But  the  point  to  be  made 
now  is  that  the  Temptation  means  for  Christ  the  possibility 
of  choice.  He  could  have  chosen  either  of  the  two  paths 
spoken  of  in  the  last  temptation.  Otherwise  the  whole  trans- 
action is  a  mere  stage-play,  unreal  and  utterly  valueless  to  us 


38     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

in  our  own  spiritual  history.  Finally,  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say  much  about  the  value  of  Christ's  experience  for  us. 
That  should  speak  for  itself,  if  our  interpretation  is  in  any 
way  true. 

But  it  does  seem  more  and  more  certain,  as  the  history  of 
man's  development,  especially  the  growth  of  religion,  is  studied, 
that  a  profound  crisis  in  the  spiritual  history  of  the  race  was 
being  reached.  It  was  not  so  much  that  Christ  was  making 
new  discoveries,  as  that  he  was  affirming  certain  values,  felt 
already  by  the  prophets,  in  a  new  way,  and  was  thereby 
entering  on  a  new  section,  so  to  speak,  of  the  spiritual  history 
of  the  race,  which  was  to  make  possible  new  and  undreamed-of 
developments  along  the  new  path.  I  think  this  will  become 
clearer  as  the  successive  crises  in  the  life  of  Christ  are  dealt 
with,  leading  up  to  the  final  crisis  of  the  Cross. 


SECOND   DIVISION 

THE    FIRST    STAGE    OF 
THE   MINISTRY   AND 
THE  FIRST  CRISIS 


CHAPTER  VII 
The  First  Period  of  the  Ministry 


STUDY  VII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  4:  12-25;  Mark  1 :  14-45;  Matt  5:20;  Matt.  10. 

Notes  : 

The  leader  should,  if  possible,  have  read  carefully  through 
Matt.  5-7,  10,  with  parts  of  the  parallel  passages  in  Mark 
and  Luke.  The  nature  of  the  discussion  in  our  study  pre- 
cludes much  detailed  examination  of  the  dates  and  places  of 
Christ's  ministry,  but  the  student  should  follow  Stevens  and 
Burton's  Harmony,  or  Huck's  "Synopsis  of  the  First  Three 
Gospels";  Swete's  outline  of  the  ministry  in  the  Introduc- 
tion to  his  "Commentary  on  St.  Mark"  is  also  admirable,  the 
map  being  specially  helpful.  The  aim  of  the  study  is  to 
avoid  too  much  discussion  of  irrelevant  details,  and  to  con- 
centrate on  the  things  suggested  as  central,  especially  the  way 
in  which  the  first  period  of  the  ministry  naturally  works  up 
to  a  climax.  Unless  the  historical  conditions  are  clearly  seen, 
the  crisis  is  quite  inexplicable. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  is  meant  by  "righteousness"  in  Matt.  5:20?    Con- 

nect this  passage  with  the  saying  in  3:  15. 

2.  What  place  do  you  consider  the  miracles   had   in   the 

mind  of  Jesus? 

3.  What  is  the  meaning  of  the  saying  in  Matt.  10:23? 

4.  How  far  does  an  immediate  expectation  of  the  King- 

dom  seem   to   you   to   underlie   the    Sermon   on   the 
Mount  ? 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  First  Period  of  the  Ministry 

It  is  not  the  object  of  this  study  to  take  up  the  life  of 
Christ  in  detail,  but  to  throw  into  relief  the  central  things. 
Hence  a  great  deal  must  be  passed  over  in  order  that  we  may 
concentrate  on  the  critical  moments.  In  order  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  the  first  crisis  we  must  consider  a  few  things 
that  stand  out  in  the  first  period  of  Christ's  ministry. 

First  of  all  we  must  look  a  little  more  fully  into  what  was 
implied  by  the  inner  conflict  of  the  Temptations.  This  inner 
conflict  plainly  implies  two  divergent  views  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  We  saw  reflected  in  Christ's  mind  what  we  may  call 
the  popular  view,  largely  based  on  the  more  material  expecta- 
tions drawn  from  the  prophets  and  the  apocalyptists,  and  a 
spiritual  conception  also  drawn  in  part  from  the  deeper 
element  in  the  prophets.  Of  the  latter  we  shall  have  more 
to  say  later,  although  some  modern  scholars  are  ready  to  deny 
the  existence  of  this  element  entirely. 

Here  there  arises  the  question  suggested  by  certain  rather 
difficult  passages  in  the  Gospels — whether  Christ,  during  the 
first  period  of  his  wrork  in  Galilee,  did  not  look  for  some  pos- 
sible way  by  which  the  two  divergent  views  might  be  recon- 
ciled. Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way,  while  Christ  had  abso- 
lutely rejected  in  the  temptation  the  principle  which  would 
deny  the  spiritual  basis  and  nature  of  the  Kingdom,  it  is 
possible  that  he  did  not  see  fully  how  complete  was  the 
divergence  between  the  path  on  which  he  had  firmly  set  his 
feet,  and  the  path  along  which  the  majority  of  the  people 
amongst  whom  he  labored,  and  his  own  disciples  as  well, 
were  prepared  to  travel.  It  is  this  which  leads  up  to  and  in 
a  sense  produces  the  first  crisis. 

Bearing  this  in  mind,  we  can  glance  at  the  main  features  of 
the  first  period  of  Christ's  work.  It  seems  clearly  established 
that  Christ  did  not  begin  his  ministry  immediately  after  the 
Temptations.    It  was  John  the  Baptist's  message  and  ministry 

43 


44     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

that  had  called  him  out  of  Nazareth,  and  had  given  the 
impulse  to  action,  and  it  was  the  silencing  of  the  Baptist's 
voice  by  imprisonment  that  gave  the  signal  to  Christ  to  take 
up  the  torch  where  his  predecessor  had  let  it  fall,  and  to 
carry  on  the  same  message.  There  is  no  break ;  it  was  the 
sight  of  the  publicans  and  harlots  confessing  their  sins  in  the 
Jordan  that  had  kindled  Christ's  hopes  of  what  might  be  done, 
of  what  God  was  able  to  do,  among  His  people,  and  the  say- 
ing belongs  to  the  outset  of  Christ's  work,  "I  came  not  to 
call  righteous  persons  but  sinners."  They  were  the  people 
for  the  Kingdom.  The  addition  "to  repentance"  spoils  the 
direct  connection  of  the  saying  with  the  expectation  of  the 
Kingdom  which  breathes  in  it.1  So  we  have  the  impression 
of  a  crowded  breathless  time,  multitudes  thronging  to  hear  the 
new  prophet  and  to  see  the  works  which  he  did,  disciples 
chosen  and  trained,  and  then  sent  out  to  do  the  same  work  in 
the  small  towns  and  villages  of  Galilee. 

The  points  which  we  must  pick  out  for  thought  are  three: 

1.  The  main  character  of  Christ's  teaching  is  summed  up 
in  his  own  later  phrase  "the  word  of  the  Kingdom"  or  in 
the  phrase  of  Mark  "the  good  news  of  the  Kingdom."  It 
was  first  and  foremost  an  announcement  that  the  Kingdom 
so  long  desired  was  at  hand.  But  we  may  also  gather  from 
the  discourses  which  Matthew  has  brought  together  in  what 
is  called  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  that  while  the  Kingdom 
is  near,  very  near,  and  the  other-worldly  point  of  view  is 
predominant  throughout,  yet  the  fundamental  thing  about  the 
Kingdom  is  "righteousness."  That  word  is  the  keynote  of  the 
early  teaching  of  Christ  on  the  Kingdom.  It  would  take  too 
long  to  discuss  here  the  history  and  growth  of  the  meaning 
of  this  pregnant  word,  and  something  must  be  taken  for 
granted  when  we  say  that  the  fundamental  idea  of  righteous- 
ness is  God's  character,  what  God  is.  The  people  who  are 
to  be  in  the  Kingdom,  to  possess  it,  are  the  people  who  are 
like  God.  The  behavior  of  the  sons  of  the  Kingdom  must 
be  guided  by  God's  way  of  acting — "be  ye  therefore  merci- 
ful as  your  Father  also  is  merciful." 

2.  Without  discussing  here  the  philosophical  and  historical 
questions   which   are   raised   by   the   miracles   of    Christ,   the 

1  The  words  els  fxeravoiav  (Luke  5:32)  are  omitted  in  Matt,  and  Mark  by 
the  whole  weight  of  manuscript  evidence,  and  undoubtedly  do  not  belong  to  the 
primitive  tradition  of  the  saying. 


FIRST  PERIOD  OF  MINISTRY  45 

point  to  be  made  is  that,  even  should  we  reduce  the  miracles 
to  the  minimum  admitted,  e.g.,  in  the  Rev.  J.  M.  Thompson's 
study  of  the  miracles  of  Jesus,  those  cures  of  mental  and 
nervous  disorders  which  may  be  controlled  by  powers  of  sug- 
gestion or  psychiatry,  we  are  still  able  to  mark  Christ's 
own  attitude  towards  his  works  of  power.  He  regarded 
them,  not  in  any  way  as  signs  intended  to  attract  attention 
to  himself,  but  as  the  exhibition  of  God's  character;  the 
removal  of  sin  and  the  removal  of  the  material  consequences 
of  sin  were  two  sides  of  the  same  work,  the  work  of  God. 
This  point  also  will  come  up  again  later. 

3.  Christ  looked  upon  the  calling  of  sinners,  the  preaching 
of  the  Kingdom,  the  healing  of  diseases,  all  as  the  prepara- 
tion in  the  little  circle  round  the  Lake  of  Galilee  for  the 
immediate  coming  of  the  Kingdom.  In  the  discourse  which 
Matthew  has  assigned  to  the  sending  out  of  the  Twelve,  in 
chapter  10,  we  have  a  hard  saying — 10 :  23  "when  they  per- 
secute you  in  one  city,  flee  to  the  next,  for  verily  I  say  to  you, 
ye  shall  not  have  finished  the  cities  of  Israel  until  the  Son  of 
Man  be  come."  The  only  way  to  take  this  passage  is  at  its 
face  value.  It  shows  that  Christ  expected,  hoped,  that  before 
this  journey  on  which  he  was  sending  his  disciples  out  should 
be  completed,  the  tribulations  preceding  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  would  have  begun,  and  he  himself  would  have 
been  manifested  by  God  as  the  Messiah,  the  Ruler  of  the  new 
Kingdom  in  the  coming  age.  Hence  we  find  the  suggestion 
already  made  borne  out,  that  Christ  was  hoping  that  the 
immediate  setting  up  of  the  Kingdom  on  earth,  and  his  own 
place  in  it,  might  still  be  compatible  with  the  Kingdom  of 
the  poor  in  spirit,  of  righteousness  and  likeness  to  God, 
which  he  had  set  forth  in  his  message. 

This  is,  of  course,  an  extremely  summary  sketch  of  the 
character  of  the  first  part  of  Christ's  ministry,  but  its  object 
is  to  make  clear  the  fact  which  will  be  dwelt  on  more  fully  in 
our  next  chapter,  that  the  first  period  works  up  to  a  climax, 
whose  extreme  tension  and  pressure  for  the  mind  of  Christ 
has  hardly  been  realized  in  many  studies  of  the  life  of  Christ. 
We  find  Christ  at  this  point  in  his  ministry  waiting  with  an 
intensity  of  expectation  for  what  might  happen  that  finds 
expression  in  the  great  utterances  of  that  most  difficult  chapter 
in  Matthew,  the  nth.  We  shall  deal  with  this  crisis  in  our 
next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
The  First  Crisis.     The  Message  from  John 


STUDY  VIII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  11:1-19;  Luke  7 :  18-35 ;  16 :  14-16. 

Notes  : 

The  parallel  passages  should  be  carefully  compared.  The 
Evangelists  evidently  found  the  sayings  hard,  and  Luke,  as 
he  often  does,  has  paraphrased  some  of  them.  The  student 
must  judge  for  himself,  in  the  light  of  his  reading  of  the 
whole  situation,  which  most  nearly  represents  the  original. 
Possibly  neither  has  preserved  entirely  the  exact  force  of  the 
Aramaic  original.  The  leader  may  find  some  helpful  sug- 
gestions as  to  the  meaning  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  Christ's 
time  from  Dalman's  "Words  of  Jesus." 

The  historical  situation  is  the  main  thing;  once  that  is 
grasped,  it  lights  up  much  that  is  otherwise  dark. 

Questions: 

1.    What  elements  of  crisis  do  you  find  in  the  situation  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nth  of  Matthew? 

1.  Can  you  find  any  connection  between  the  Temptations 

and  the  episode  in  Matt.  11:2-6? 

2.  What  do  you  think  is  the  meaning  of  Christ's  answer  to 

the  messengers  of  John? 
4.     How  do  you  understand  Matt.  11:11-14? 


CHAPTER  VIII 


The    First   Crisis.     The   Message 
from  John 


It  is  Luke  alone  who  keeps  a  touch  of  Christ's  personal 
experience  connecting  the  Temptation  with  his  subsequent 
path.  He  says,  and  one  hears  an  echo  of  Christ's  voice  in  it, 
"the  devil  left  him  for  a  season."  For  the  conflict  begun  in 
the  desert  solitude  was  to  last  until  the  Cross,  but  like  all 
mental  struggles  it  had  its  moments  of  crisis  and  climax. 

The  point  to  which  we  came  at  the  end  of  the  last  chapter 
was  such  a  moment.  It  was  a  moment  of  intense  and  eager 
expectation  on  the  part  of  Christ.  He  had  sent  out  the  Twelve 
after  due  preparation,  and  in  the  nth  of  Matthew  we  find 
him  waiting  in  suspense  for  their  return,  and  at  the  end  of 
the  chapter  learning  the  result.  How  he  accepted  the  result 
we  shall  see  later.  Now  we  have  to  realize  upon  what  tensely 
strung  cords  the  message  of  John  the  Baptist  smote.  Christ 
was  waiting  for  the  supreme  mysterious  moment  of  God's 
intervention,  for  the  beginning  of  the  tribulation,  the  sign  of 
the  end,  and  for  the  manifestation  of  the  Son  of  Alan.  This 
was  the  psychological  moment  at  which  the  messengers  of 
John  the  Baptist  reached  him  with  their  master's  pathetic 
and  despairing  message,  "Art  thou  the  coming  one,  or  do  we 
await  another?"  The  force  of  the  situation  was  extraordinary. 
We  know  from  the  words  that  follow  later  how  Christ  read 
the  situation,  how  he  regarded  John  the  Baptist  as  the  fore- 
runner, the  Elias  of  current  expectation.  But  here  was  the 
forerunner  lying  helpless  in  Machaerus  at  the  mercy  of 
Herod's  caprice,  and  yet  God  had  not  said  a  word.  It  is 
difficult  for  us  to  realize  how  keenly  Christ  felt  the  situation. 
John  knew  that  Christ  possessed  power,  and  found  it  hard 
to  understand  why  such  power  should  leave  him  where  he  was. 

49 


50     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

The  only  meaning  of  it  could  be  that  his  intuition  or  spiritual 
experience  at  the  Baptism  was  mistaken.  Christ  was  not  the 
coming  One,  and  the  Kingdom  was  not  yet  at  hand. 

All  this  and  more  Christ  felt  in  the  message.  It  was  the 
temptation  once  more,  "if  thou  be  the  Son  of  God."  What 
more  worthy  use  of  his  power  could  there  be  than  to  inter- 
vene on  behalf  of  such  a  servant,  to  remove  his  doubts,  to 
convince  him  that  his  expectations  and  his  experiences  had 
been  true?  Yet  one  sees  at  once,  in  the  light  of  the  first  con- 
flict, how  the  thing  looked  to  Christ.  It  was  the  old  tempta- 
tion in  a  subtler  form,  appealing  to  the  very  affections  and 
faith  of  Christ.  With  the  sense  strong  upon  him  that  God 
was  about  to  intervene  for  him,  the  temptation  must  have  been 
extreme,  either  to  do  something,  or  to  say  something  so  clear 
and  decisive  that  John  could  no  longer  doubt. 

But  he  stands  firm.  I  cannot  but  think  that  Matthew  pre- 
serves the  true  spirit  of  the  scene  and  the  answer.  Christ  does 
not  fill  a  crowded  hour  with  miracles  and  then  tell  the  aston- 
ished messengers  to  return  to  their  master  with  a  rebuke  for 
his  little  faith.  That  would  have  run  clean  against  the  issue 
of  the  Temptation.  John  had  heard  from  his  disciples  of 
Christ's  works  of  power.  When  the  messengers  come  they 
find  Christ  doing  as  was  his  wont,  preaching  the  Gospel  of 
the  Kingdom  to  those  who  most  needed  it,  and  using  his 
power  as  occasion  offered  to  remove  such  ills  as  he  could.  He 
says  to  the  messengers  in  effect,  "go  and  tell  John  that  what 
I  began  doing  when  I  came  out  I  must  go  on  doing.  I  can 
only  do  the  will  of  God.  But  God's  time  is  coming,  let  John's 
faith  hold  fast  to  that,  and  he  will  yet  rejoice  in  God's  inter- 
vention for  him  and  for  me."  It  was  a  sublime  message  of 
faith  and  yet  of  pathetic  appeal.  He  could  not,  even  at  the 
risk  of  being  misjudged  by  such  a  one  as  John,  anticipate 
God's  time,  or  step  one  hair's  breadth  out  of  the  path  that  he 
had  seen  to  be  God's  will  for  him. 

So  the  messengers  went.  And  then  the  emotion  and  tension 
found  some  relief  in  strange  mysterious  words,  half  passion- 
ate expectation  and  exaltation,  half  sadness  and  bitter  irony. 
What  did  you  go  out  to  Jordan  for,  when  that  message  of 
the  Kingdom  drew  you?  What  did  you  expect  to  see?  Some 
of  you  saw  a  deluded  enthusiast,  shaken  with  the  wind  of 
his  own  passionate  belief  in  a  dream.  Some  of  you  were  dis- 
appointed  that   the   herald   of   the   Kingdom   of    David   and 


THE  MESSAGE  FROM  JOHN  51 

Solomon  wore  so  mean  an  appearance  and  attire.  The  more 
sober  and  thoughtful  of  you  gratefully  accepted  God's  gift 
of  prophecy,  rekindled  after  long  silence.  But  not  one  of  you 
dreamed  how  glorious  and  great  was  the  person  you  saw, 
for  he  was  none  other  than  the  forerunner  himself,  Elias ! 
The  time  of  prophesying  is  over,  the  time  for  action  has 
begun,  God  is  bringing  in  the  Kingdom.  And  just  as  you  did 
not  recognize  in  the  somber  garb  of  the  ascetic  the  glorious 
figure  of  Elias,  so  also  have  you  no  shadow  of  a  thought 
that  among  you,  reckoned  less  even  than  John,  is  one  who  is 
greater  than  Elias,  the  Messiah  himself !  So  through  enigmas 
and  dark  sayings  breaks  the  flash  of  that  intense  expectation 
of  the  moment. 

Then  the  key  changes  into  the  minor.  But  can  the  Kingdom 
come  to  such  a  generation?  To  them  John  is  a  madman,  and 
I  am  the  companion  of  publicans  and  sinners.  That  is  all  they 
see,  how  can  the  Kingdom  come  to  them? 

Then  the  quiet  ending  of  faith,  resolved  to  wait  to  the  end 
for  God — "wisdom  is  justified  of  her  works."  So  the  first 
part  of  the  crisis  passes  over.  The  second  and  more  intense 
phase  of  it  has  yet  to  come. 


CHAPTER   IX 
The  First  Crisis.    The  Yoke  o£  the  Kingdom 


STUDY  IX 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  11:20-30;  Luke  10:13-24. 

Notes  : 

A  great  deal  turns  on  the  significance  for  Christ  of  the 
return  of  the  disciples  from  the  mission  already  mentioned. 
The  great  passages  in  this  week's  study  cannot  be  understood 
apart  from  this.  Hence  the  importance  of  the  incident 
should  be  very  carefully  thought  out.  One  has  to  remember 
that  much  of  the  peculiar  intensity  of  the  situation  would  be 
very  difficult  to  remember  and  record  half  a  century  later 
when  the  conditions  had  totally  changed.  Hence  the  extreme 
value  of  such  passages  as  these,  which  still  preserve  that  glow 
and  passion  of  a  moment  whose  meaning  for  Christ  was  very 
soon  almost  entirely  lost  by  a  later  generation.  If  possible, 
it  would  be  well  for  the  student  to  try  and  think  out  the 
connection  between  Matt.  11:27  and  the  entire  situation 
described  in  Matt.  11,  before  reading  the  chapter  in  this  book 
dealing  with  the  subject.  The  treatment  offered  here  is  an 
attempt  to  reinterpret  along  historical  lines  a  passage  that 
has  always  been  taken  in  a  somewhat  different  sense.  But 
it  is  no  way  offered  as  a  dogmatic  statement,  and  each  must 
find  out  for  himself  the  inner  meaning  of  what  is  perhaps 
the  most  deeply  significant  passage  in  the  Gospels. 

Questions  : 

1.  Do  you  consider  that  these  passages  point  to  a  crisis 

in  the  spiritual  experience  of  Christ? 

2.  What  is  the  connection  between   the  external   circum- 

stances and  the  inner  crisis? 

3.  Do  you  consider  that  Matt.  11:20-30  contains  any  sug- 

gestion of  a  change  of  plan  on  Christ's  part? 

4.  What  did  Christ  mean  by  "my  yoke"? 


CHAPTER  IX 

The    First   Crisis.      The  Yoke  of 
the  Kingdom 

In  Luke  we  have  an  account  of  two  missions  apparently 
closely  connected,  the  sending  out  of  the  Twelve  in  chapter  9 
and  that  of  the  Seventy,  or,  as  many  ancient  authorities  have 
it,  the  Seventy-Two.  To  both  of  these  accounts  is  added  a 
charge  which  is  evidently  a  shorter  version  of  the  charge  in 
Matt.  10.  It  is  possible  that  Luke  had  obtained  from  differ- 
ent sources  varying  accounts  of  the  same  mission,  and  has 
given  both.  However  that  may  be,  his  account  enables  us  to 
supplement  Matthew  in  several  important  points.  He  places 
the  great  passage  Matt.  11 125-30  immediately  after  the  return 
of  the  mission,  and  also  relates  the  spirit  in  which  the  dis- 
ciples returned  and  the  strange  way  in  which  Jesus  answered 
them.  These  details  help  us  to  fill  out  the  picture  in  Matt. 
11.  If  we  place  the  return  of  the  mission  after  Matt.  11 :  19, 
where  it  falls  more  naturally  than  after  verse  24,  we  shall 
have  the  situation  before  us  which  gave  rise  to  the  second 
phase  of  the  crisis  we  are  studying.  We  saw  in  Matt.  10 :  23, 
and  in  the  opening  section  of  chapter  11,  the  reflection  of  the 
tension  and  expectation  with  which  Christ  was  awaiting  the 
return  of  those  he  had  sent  out,  or  rather,  was  awaiting  the 
intervention  of  God  and  the  ushering  in  of  the  Kingdom.  The 
tension  is  increased  by  the  pathetic  message  from  John,  and  it 
is  quite  possible  that  during  the  absence  of  the  disciples  the 
news  may  have  reached  Christ  of  John's  pitiful  end. 

Then  the  disciples  come  back,  and  nothing  has  happened. 
They  are  highly  delighted  at  their  own  success  in  dealing 
with  cases  of  demon-possession,  but  nothing  else  stirs  the 
horizon,  no  sign  of  the  Kingdom  has  broken  upon  them.  So 
Christ,  as  ever,   faces  the  fresh  crisis,   and  realizes  what  it 

55 


56     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

means.  His  expectation  is  disappointed.  They  have  come 
back  and  yet  the  Kingdom  has  not  come.  John,  the  fore- 
runner, is  dead.  Chorazin,  Bethsaida,  Capernaum  sleep  com- 
placently. There  are  three  distinct  sayings  of  Christ  which 
belong  to  this  crisis,  and  help  us  to  penetrate  a  little  into  the 
secret  of  his  mind.  First  of  all,  there  is  the  saying  in  Luke 
10:18-20,  "I  was  watching  Satan  as  lightning  falling  from 
heaven."  That  word  seems  to  me  to  reflect  both  the  height- 
ened expectation  before,  and  the  revulsion  of  feeling  follow- 
ing, the  return  of  the  disciples.  In  some  flash  of  summer 
lightning,  it  might  be,  his  yearning  for  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  and  the  triumph  of  God  had  traced  the  fall  of 
Satan  from  heaven.  But  nothing  has  happened ;  only  the  dis- 
ciples are  there,  not  understanding  his  mood,  pleased  at  their 
own  success,  unaware  utterly  of  the  tragedy  of  the  thing  to 
him. 

Then  the  disappointment  overflows  in  bitter  prophetic  words 
of  denunciation  and  woe  upon  these  unmoved  cities  to  which 
heaven  had  come  so  near,  in  whose  streets  the  powers  of  the 
world  to  come  had  been  seen.  They  had  not  repented,  they 
had  prevented  the  Kingdom  from  coming. 

But  last  and  deepest,  there  is  the  utterance  of  Matt. 
11:25-30.  If  Luke  is  right,  it  is  the  utterance  of  exaltation, 
a  strange  and  sudden  transition  from  grief  and  disappoint- 
ment.    "In  that  hour  Jesus  exulted  in  spirit  and  said." 

If  it  is  so,  it  is  the  exultation  of  renewed  victory.  For 
once  more,  and  sharper  than  ever,  must  the  conflict  have 
pressed  upon  him.  This  failure,  this  disappointment,  John's 
death,  the  dullness  and  narrowness  of  those  who  followed 
him,  the  only  result  of  the  path  that  he  had  chosen  in  the 
conflict  in  the  wilderness  seemed  to  be  futility  and  folly, 
hopeless  failure.  Surely  such  a  result  proved  the  choice 
wrong,  he  must  acknowledge  it,  and  strike  out  a  new  path. 

Here  Christ's  faith  and  insight  shine  out.  He  sees  that 
there  is  something  so  deep  and  so  hard  to  overcome,  that 
the  old  visions  of  the  Kingdom  as  the  prophets  saw  it,  Israel's 
Kingdom,  are  receding,  and  his  path  begins  to  stand  out  apart, 
diverging  from  the  old  track,  tending  on  to  the  unknown. 
His  faith  embraces  the  challenge  of  the  situation,  and  he 
accepts  it,  not  with  dull  resignation,  but  with  splendid  cour- 
age from  the  Father's  hands.  These  limitations  accepted  at 
the  beginning,  but  now  felt  more  clearly,  are  but  the  yoke  of 


THE  YOKE  OF  THE  KINGDOM  57 

the  Kingdom  which  he  is  to  bear.  The  rabbis  had  the  phrase 
for  a  proselyte,  one  who  accepted  the  obligations  of  the  Jewish 
faith,  that  he  had  taken  the  yoke  of  the  Kingdom  of  heaven. 
Christ  finds  a  deeper  meaning  in  the  familiar  phrase.  All 
this  failure,  this  disaster,  John's  death,  crushing  as  it  must 
have  seemed  to  him,  became  the  very  bands  and  cords  of  the 
yoke  of  the  Kingdom ;  so  the  Kingdom  shall  come,  not  by  the 
rejection  of  these  limitations,  but  by  the  acceptance  of  them 
as  the  Father's  good  pleasure.  He  means  to  give  the  Kingdom 
to  this  handful  of  simple  people  who  alone  have  had  faith  to 
follow.  So  be  it,  the  Father's  will  is  good — henceforth  Christ 
will  concentrate  himself  upon  those  to  whom  the  Father  has 
been  pleased  to  reveal  the  secret  hid  from  the  wise  and  pru- 
dent. 

Read  in  this  light,  that  strange  mysterious  passage  in  verse 
27  seems  to  spring  naturally  out  of  just  such  an  intensely 
human  struggle  as  the  Temptation,  and  its  connection  with 
the  historical  situation  already  described  becomes  clear. 

"Everything  has  been  given  me  by  my  Father."  In  these 
words  he  accepts  all  the  failure  and  disappointment  of  the 
bitter  hour  from  the  Father's  hand.  He  realizes  with  the  same 
faith  and  intensity  as  in  childhood,  but  with  the  mature  cour- 
age and  open-eyed  resolution  of  manhood,  that  "the  yoke  of 
the  Kingdom"  is  being  laid  upon  him  by  the  Father,  that  thus 
the  Kingdom  itself  may  be  consummated. 

"No  one  recognizes  the  Son  except  the  Father."  That 
divine  secret,  realized  by  him  at  the  Baptism,  is  still  unknown 
to  others ;  Chorazin,  Bethsaida,  Capernaum,  John  the  Baptist, 
the  disciples,  all  so  far  have  failed  to  recognize  him.  But  it 
is  enough  for  him  that  the  Father  recognizes  him.  His 
approval  carries  him  on. 

But  if  no  one  can  recognize  him  as  yet,  then  it  follows  that 
no  one  yet  really  knows  God's  secret,  God's  way  of  the  King- 
dom. "No  one  recognizes  the  Father,  except  the  Son."  He 
feels  that  he  is  still  alone,  tragically  alone,  with  his  secret  of 
what  God's  character  and  God's  will  are.  All  round  him  he 
sees  men  toiling  and  laboring  in  their  various  ways  to  bring 
about  the  Kingdom,  while  he,  and  he  only,  knows  the  true  way 
of  its  coming.  So  his  work  is  clear,  if  he  knows  he  must  teach 
those  whom  the  Father  has  drawn  after  him,  "And  he  to 
whomsoever  the.  Son  is  pleased  to  reveal  Him."  He  offers 
himself,  the  possessor  of  the  secret  of  the  Kingdom,  the  bearer 


58     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

of  the  yoke,  to  teach  those  who  are  willing  to  learn  of  him, 
how  good  and  gracious  a  thing  is  this  yoke  of  the  spirit  which 
can  transform  disappointment  and  bitterness  into  causes  of 
hope  and  exultation. 

Here  the  second  stage  of  our  study  ends.  It  is  Matthew 
who  marks  this  first  crisis  more  clearly  than  any  of  the  other 
Synoptists.  It  is  the  end  of  any  hope  that  Christ  may  have 
had  of  a  beginning  of  the  Kingdom  in  Galilee  and  of  the 
setting  up  of  the  Kingdom  without  his  death.  He  turns  now, 
as  we  shall  see,  to  the  small  body  of  intimate  disciples  and 
followers,  sets  his  face  towards  Jerusalem,  and  the  Cross 
begins  to  loom  out  in  the  distance. 


THIRD    DIVISION 

THE  SECOND  STAGE  OF 
THE    MINISTRY   AND 
THE   SECOND   CRISIS 


CHAPTER    X 
The  Second  Period  of  the  Ministry 


STUDY  X 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  12 ;  13 :  1-17,  58 ;  Mark  3 :  20-35  J  Matt.  15 :  21-28. 

Notes  : 

The  order  of  events  in  this  part  of  the  ministry  is  even 
more  difficult  to  reconstruct  with  any  certainty.  We  can  only 
gather  the  general  features.  The  great  thing  to  observe  is 
that  a  change  of  method  clearly  appears,  but  no  change  of 
central  plan.  The  "mission"  method,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  is 
abandoned,  and  the  general  plan  is  directed  towards  the  spe- 
cial training  and  preparation  of  the  disciples  for  a  crisis 
which  Christ  saw  would  be  inevitable.  The  parables  are  of 
special  significance  here,  especially  the  Kingdom  parables  in 
the  13th  of  Matthew.  We  have  not  space  to  deal  with  them 
in  detail,  but  the  whole  chapter  should  be  very  carefully 
studied  in  the  light  of  Christ's  fresh  outlook  on  the  future 
resulting  from  the  first  crisis. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  changes  do  you  notice  in  the  second  stage  of  the 

Ministry? 

2.  What   estimate  did   Christ's   relatives   form   of   him   at 

this  time,  and  why? 

3.  What  is  the  meaning  of  Matt.  13:58? 


CHAPTER  X 

The  Second  Period  of  the  Ministry 

It  is  well  known,  in  spite  of  harmonies  and  other  appa- 
ratus, that  nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  arrange  the  events 
of  the  life  of  Christ  in  a  satisfactory  historical  sequence. 
Mark  is  without  doubt  a  collection  of  episodes  and  sayings, 
with  an  account  of  the  Passion  quite  out  of  proportion  to 
the  rest  of  the  Gospel  in  its  fulness  and  detail.  Since  the 
other  two  Synoptic  Gospels  are  largely  dependent  on  Mark 
for  their  narrative,  we  clearly  have  no  certain  tradition  of 
the  sequence  of  events.  Hence  any  light  on  the  internal  signi- 
ficance of  the  life  of  Christ  must  help  to  some  extent  to  bring 
the  episodes  into  a  definite  grouping.  Our  principal  object 
in  this  study  is  not  to  reconstruct  the  life  of  Christ  in  detail, 
but  to  find  some  inner  principle  which  may  help  us  to  group 
the  events  of  his  life. 

So  far  we  have  followed  the  clue  which  the  first  great  expe- 
riences of  Christ  seemed  to  give  us,  and  it  has  led  to  a  gen- 
eral impression  of  the  Galilean  ministry  and  its  underlying 
motive.  Now  the  Galilean  ministry  has  ended,  in  outward 
failure.  But  the  same  clue  will  lead  us  on  to  discover  the 
general  character  of  the  second  period  of  the  ministry,  even 
though  we  may  not  be  certain  as  to  all  the  events  and  sayings 
belonging  to  it,  or  as  to  the  exact  order  of  the  events. 

With  the  definite  closing  up  of  the  Galilean  activities  of 
Christ,  there  had  opened  before  him,  as  the  great  passage  of 
the  crisis  in  Matt,  n  :  25-30  suggests,  a  vision  of  the  next  thing 
to  be  done. 

He  felt  that  it  was  now  his  work  to  concentrate  upon  the 
handful  of  followers  who  were  the  total  result  of  the  Galilean 
ministry.  Christ  saw,  as  Matt.  11:25  and  Matt.  13:25  show, 
that  if  the  Kingdom  was  to  come  it  must  be  by  the  few  "babes" 
as  he  calls  them — perhaps  with  an  echo  of  Psalm  8 : 2  in  his 

63 


64     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

mind — who  had  begun  to  see,  if  only  dimly,  what  was  hidden 
from  the  religious  leaders  of  the  day. 

Hence  we  shall  find  that  the  main  character  of  the  next 
period  of  the  ministry,  uncertain  as  it  is  in  detail,  contains  the 
following  certain  factors:  First,  a  journey,  possibly  a  series  of 
journeys,  outside  the  limits  of  Israel,  with  various  events 
(such  as  the  story  of  the  Syrophenician  woman)  that  clearly 
fall  into  their  place  there.  Second,  a  period  of  teaching  by 
parables,  a  form  of  teaching  which  is  immediately  noted  by  the 
disciples  as  a  change.  Third,  directly  connected  with  this 
change  of  method  in  teaching,  we  find  the  record  of  a  con- 
sistent and  evidently  deliberate  attempt  en  the  part  of  Christ 
to  separate  himself  from  the  crowds,  and  to  prevent  any 
works  which  he  did  from  becoming  known,  Matt.  12:16; 
*3'36;  14:  13,  22,  23,  and  others.  Lastly,  in  utterances  which 
clearly  belong  to  this  period,  we  find  an  attention,  a  concen- 
tration of  interest  upon  the  disciples  which  does  not  appear 
to  the  same  extent  earlier,  e.  g.,  the  striking  passage  where 
Christ  renounces  the  natural  ties  of  his  family  and  claims  the 
disciples  who  in  following  him  are  doing  the  Father's  will, 
as  his  only  kindred,  Matt.  12 :  50. 

All  these  features  have  one  main  object,  the  training  of  the 
disciples.  By  taking  them  away  from  the  unrest  and  busy 
days  of  Galilee,  he  had  them  alone.  There  was  hardly  any 
exercise  of  power  during  such  journeys,  as  the  story  of  the 
Syrophenician  woman  shows.  There  was  probably  not  much 
teaching,  perhaps  questions  and  answers  from  time  to  time. 
But  they  were  days  of  quiet,  long  marches  with  perhaps  long 
intervals  of  rest  for  prayer  and  meditation.  It  may  be  that  the 
teaching  of  the  Lord's  prayer,  the  prayer  for  the  Father's 
Kingdom,  belongs  to  this  time,  as  Luke  suggests,  although 
Matthew  has  gathered  it  in  with  all  the  great  Kingdom  pas- 
sages. They  had  time  to  watch  him  live,  to  see  how  he  felt 
and  acted  in  the  ordinary  circumstances  of  everyday  life — in 
modern  phrase,  to  study  his  reaction  upon  things. 

The  result  of  this  time  we  shall  see  later.  They  got  closer 
to  him  and  he  to  them.  It  was  a  time  of  forming,  the  influ- 
ence of  personality  upon  personality.  But  it  was  also  a  time 
of  stimulation,  the  bearing  in  upon  them  again  and  again 
of  something  new  which  they  did  not  understand.  The  para- 
bles act  in  this  way  upon  them.  They  are  forced  to  ask 
questions,  and  they  begin  to  realize  that  there  is  a  secret  for 


THE  SECOND  PERIOD  OF  MINISTRY    65 

them  which   is   not   for   "them   that  are   without,"   as   Mark 
phrases  it  (Mark  4:  11). 

To  use  Christ's  own  pregnant  word,  they  were,  all  uncon- 
sciously, being  "discipled  for  the  Kingdom  of  heaven,"  Matt. 
13 :  52.  'This  is  the  keynote  of  this  period  of  the  ministry  of 
Christ.  We  shall  give  a  chapter  to  the  parables,  because  they 
offer  some  important  problems,  and  also  give  us  an  insight 
into  how  Christ  was  thinking  of  the  Kingdom  at  this  time. 


CHAPTER  XI 
The  Parables  of  the  Kingdom 


STUDY  XI 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  13;  Mark  4:  1-34;  Luke  8:4-18. 

Notes  : 

It  is  necessary  to  consider  carefully  why  the  disciples  were 
so  struck  by  the  parables.  The  parable  had  always  been  a 
familiar  method  of  prophetic  instruction,  and  Christ  had 
probably  used  parables  before,  e.g.  Matt.  7 :  24-27,  if  rightly 
assigned  to  the  first  period  of  the  ministry.  But  evidently  his 
method  of  teaching,  or  rather  preaching,  had  clearly  been 
such  as  the  collection  of  discourses  in  Matt.  5-7  suggests,  a 
straightforward  announcement  that  the  Kingdom  was  at  hand, 
and  the  exposition  of  its  spiritual  character  and  the  kind  of 
people  to  whom  it  would  belong.  Now,  however,  the  use  of 
the  word  mystery  here  shows  that  the  parable  deals  with  the 
secret  of  the  Kingdom.  It  shows  that  something  had  entered 
into  Christ's  view  of  the  Kingdom  which  could  not  be  under- 
stood by  the  mass  of  people,  owing  to  their  current  views  of 
the  nature  of  the  Kingdom  and  its  coming.  This  is  the  point 
which  needs  most  careful  thought  in  this  study. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  do  you  think  was  Christ's  object  in  the  parables? 

2.  Why  were   the   disciples    surprised   at  this   method   of 

teaching  ? 

3.  Do  you  consider  that  the  order  of  the  parables  in  Matt. 

13   is   original  or  not,  and  what  light   does  the  ar- 
rangement throw  upon  the  author's  method? 

4.  What  do  you  gather  as  to  Christ's  outlook  on  the  King- 

dom from  the  parables  in  Matt.  13? 


CHAPTER  XI 

The  Parables  of  the  Kingdom 

The  great  group  of  parables  in  Matthew  13,  concerning  the 
Kingdom,  might  well  have  a  book  to  themselves,  rather  than 
one  poor  chapter.  But  our  purpose  here  as  elsewhere  is  to 
deal  broadly  with  the  main  things  that  stand  in  relation  to 
the  object  of  our  study.  The  Synoptic  Gospels  all  emphasize 
the  change  implied  in  the  use  of  parables  and  the  attention 
which  it  aroused  in  the  disciples.  In  all  probability  the  seven 
parables  of  the  Kingdom  in  Matt.  13,  the  parable  of  the  seed 
growing  secretly  in  Mark  4,  and  perhaps  some  of  the  par- 
ables in  Luke  14-16,  belong  to  this  period  of  teaching.  The 
most  important  parable  is  the  parable  of  the  Sower.  In  Mark 
Christ  is  recorded  as  saying  to  the  disciples  "Do  ye  not  under- 
stand this  parable,  how  then  will  ye  understand  all  the  par- 
ables?" Hence  this  parable  must  be  taken  as  arising  out 
of  the  immediate  circumstances,  and  giving  Christ's  point  of 
view  on  the  situation.  When  one  reads  it  with  this  in  mind, 
it  stands  out  at  once  as  Christ's  summing  up  of  the  results  of 
the  past  months  of  work  in  Galilee,  and  his  ground  for  hope 
in  the  future.  The  word  of  the  Kingdom  had  been  sown, 
but  many  causes,  religious  conservatism,  want  of  stability  and 
moral  earnestness,  other  interests,  this-world  interests  as 
against  the  other-worldly  message  of  Jesus,  had  combined  to 
bring  about  the  result  already  seen  in  the  first  crisis.  The 
whole  promise  of  harvest  rested  on  the  little  patch  of  "good 
ground,"  those  who  in  "an  honest  and  good  heart"  had  heard 
the  word  and  kept  it.    They  were  the  ground  of  Christ's  faith. 

Then  following  this  parable,  Matthew,  no  doubt  of  set  pur- 
pose, has  arranged  six  parables  of  the  Kingdom  in  two  par- 
allel groups  of  three  each.  Three  are  spoken  in  public,  and 
three  in  private  alone  with  the  disciples.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
whether  this  really  represents  the  actual  order  in  which  they 

69 


yo     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

were  given.  But  it  is  more  than  probable  that  this  arrange- 
ment represents  a  very  definite  contrast  in  the  mind  of  Christ, 
and  one  which  he  wished  to  give  the  disciples  in  such  a  form 
that  they  would  retain  it  for  future  thought,  even  though 
they  did  not  understand  it  at  the  time.  This  contrast  is  be- 
tween the  outward  failure  of  the  Kingdom  as  Christ  saw  that 
it  would,  for  a  time,  at  least,  appear  to  his  disciples,  and  the 
inner  secret  which  for  the  faith  of  Christ  guaranteed  the  ulti- 
mate result,  and  constituted  the  motive  for  action  under  the 
difficulties  of  such  a  situation.  The  Parable  of  the  Tares  is 
plainly  a  parable  of  good  work  spoilt  by  the  carelessness  of 
those  responsible.  The  servants  can  do  nothing  to  remedy  it, 
the  only  remedy  lies  in  the  final  intervention  of  God.  This 
was  the  great  trial  and  test  which  Christ  now  saw  lying  ahead 
of  his  disciples,  when  they  would  realize  obstacles  and  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  the  immediate  coming  of  the  Kingdom. 
At  present  and  for  some  time  to  come,  their  attitude  was  one 
of  very  simple  and  childlike  expectation  of  an  immediate 
earthly  Kingdom.  Their  hopes  had  been  greatly  strengthened 
by  the  revelation  of  the  power  entrusted  to  them  during  the 
mission.  The  death  of  John  had  no  special  significance  for 
them,  and  we  shall  see  later  the  contrast  between  their  point 
of  view  and  Christ's  growing  very  marked.  The  parables  of 
the  leaven  and  the  mustard  seed  reenforce  this  point  of  view, 
I  believe,  in  spite  of  current  interpretation. 

The  last  three  parables,  all  peculiar  to  Matthew,  have  one 
thing  in  common.  They  all  imply  a  standard  of  value 
which  governs  the  action  of  those  concerned.  The  ploughman, 
the  pearl-merchant,  the  fisherman,  each  in  his  own  way  is  gov- 
erned and  impelled  to  action  by  a  secret  of  his  own,  a  knowl- 
edge which  he  possesses,  and  which  explains  things  that  would 
else  seem  strange  in  his  way  of  acting.  The  three  parables 
all  emphasize  the  saying  which  introduces  the  chapter,  "blessed 
are  your  eyes  for  they  see,  and  your  ears  for  they  hear." 

At  the  great  crisis  Jesus  had  acknowledged,  not  with  bitter- 
ness or  resentment,  but  accepting  it  as  God's  way,  that  the 
wise  and  prudent  could  not  see,  and  that  only  a  few  simple 
folk  had  been  enabled  to  see  by  the  Father.  It  is  now  his 
object,  as  we  have  seen,  to  develop  this  faculty,  this  gift  in 
them.  They  are  quite  unaware  as  yet  of  its  real  meaning,  of 
the  importance  of  what  they  are  daily  seeing,  things  that 
prophets  and  wise  men  had  longed  to  see  and  had  not  seen. 


THE  PARABLES  OF  THE  KINGDOM      71 

This  vision  was  to  govern  them  and  guide  their  course  of 
action  when  the  great  test  and  crisis,  which  Christ  already 
foresaw,  should  come  upon  them. 

So  when  the  parables  for  the  time  being  were  ended,  Christ 
asked  them  if  they  had  understood.  They  thought  they  had, 
and  said  so.  He  knew  that  much  had  to  happen  yet  before 
they  really  did  understand,  so  he  says  in  his  own  inimitable 
way,  "therefore  every  scribe  discipled  to  the  Kingdom  of 
heaven  is  like  a  householder,  that  brings  out  of  his  storehouse 
new  things  as  well  as  old."  When  their  discipleship  was  ful- 
filled they  would  see  what  he  had  meant.  They  would  see 
that  God  had  new  things  in  store,  making  the  old  more 
wonderful  than  before. 


CHAPTER  XII 
The  Second  Crisis.     The  Confession 


STUDY  XII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  16:13-20;  Mark  8:27-30;  Luke  9:18-21. 

Notes  : 

It  is  necessary  first  to  consider  whether  the  form  of  the 
confession  given  in  Mark  is  original  or  not.  There  the  con- 
fession is  simply  a  recognition  of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus. 
The  position  here  adopted  is  that  the  addition  given  by 
Matthew  is  genuine  and  is  borne  out  by  the  passage  that  fol- 
lows immediately  after.  The  significance  of  the  addition  must 
be  carefully  studied.  The  danger  is  that  we  may  read  back  into 
this  early  stage  in  the  disciples'  development  the  meaning 
which  the  Church  has  come  to  give  to  the  title  "Son  of  God." 
The  Old  Testament  use  of  the  epithet,  e.  g.,  as  applied  to 
angels  in  Job  1,  shows  that  such  a  meaning  was  not  neces- 
sarily implied.  Also  if  the  line  taken  up  in  Matt.  11:27  be 
carried  on  into  this  passage,  the  connection  becomes  clear, 
and  a  powerful  support  for  the  genuineness  of  the  passage 
is  thus  obtained.  It  is  also  important  to  think  out  why  at  this 
particular  juncture  Christ  chose  to  do  what  he  had  never 
done  before,  that  is,  to  make  the  disciples  turn  their  minds 
in  upon  what  they  thought  about  him. 

Questions  : 

1.  Is  there  any  reason  for  naming  this  period  in  Christ's 

experience  the  Second  Crisis? 

2.  Consider    the    genuineness    of    the    important    addition 

made  by  Matthew  in  the  account  of  this  episode. 

3.  What  did  the  expression  "Son  of  the  living  God"  mean 

as  coming  from  Peter? 

4.  How  did  Peter  arrive  at  this  position? 


CHAPTER  XII 

The  Second  Crisis.  The  Confession 


The  second  crisis  in  the  life  of  Christ  is  less  conditioned  by- 
external  circumstances  than  the  first.  It  is  possible  that  the 
death  of  John  the  Baptist  helped  to  bring  it  about  in  the 
mind  of  Christ.  But  the  determining  causes  are  principally 
inward.  One  feels  strongly  that  many  of  the  early  applications 
of  Old  Testament  passages  to  Christ  have  their  source  in 
things  which  he  said  himself.  There  are  two  striking  cases  of 
this  in  Matt  8:16;  12:18-21,  and  another  which  we  shall 
speak  of  when  we  come  to  it,  in  Luke  22:  2>7- 

All  three  come  from  what  are  called  the  Servant  passages  in 
Isaiah,  and  two  of  them  from  the  crowning  passage  in  Isaiah 
53.  We  have  not  space  to  discuss  the  interpretation  of  the 
Servant  passages,  but  the  suggestion  here  is  that  the  mind  of 
Christ  had  been  gradually  influenced  by  the  point  of  view 
there  put  forward,  and  that  after  the  disappointment  of  the 
first  crisis,  combined  with  John's  death,  he  had  come  to 
believe  that  the  work  of  the  Servant  in  bringing  the  knowledge 
of  God  to  the  Gentile  world  involved  some  kind  of  supreme 
sacrifice,  possibly  death. 

This  working  in  his  mind,  together  with  the  belief  still  as 
strong  as  ever  that  the  Kingdom  was  close  at  hand,  caused 
a  sense  of  the  shortness  of  the  time  and  a  desire  to  test  the 
results  of  the  past  months  of  training.  He  wished  to  know 
whether  the  disciples  were  ready  for  a  further  advance,  and 
his  own  insight  showed  him  when  to  put  the  test.  Hence 
arise  the  conditions  of  what  one  may  call  the  second  crisis. 
The  scene  is  at  Caesarea  Philippi,  away  on  the  limits  of 
Galilee,  possibly  at  the  end  of  one  of  the  northern  journeys 
before  turning  southward  for  the  last  journey  up  to  Jeru- 
salem. 

It  is  very  marked  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  that  Christ  hardly 

75 


76     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

ever  directs  the  attention  of  disciples  to  himself,  save  in  the 
command  to  follow  him.  He  does  not  tell  them  who  he  is, 
nor  ask  them  what  they  think  about  him,  and  according  to 
the  Synoptic  record,  he  constantly  uses  the  baffling  name  of 
Son  of  Man  in  speaking  of  himself. 

But  now  at  last  he  feels  the  time  has  come  to  sound  them, 
to  find  out  how  far  they  had  travelled  during  the  last  few 
months,  and  whether  they  were  ready  to  face  a  crisis  with 
him.  First  he  asked  them  a  question  which  from  him  may- 
have  seemed  strange  and  unusual  to  them.  He  asked  them 
what  people  were  saying  about  him.  They  told  him  what  they 
had  heard  dropped  here  and  there  in  chance  conversations 
by  the  way.  People  knew  that  John  the  Baptist  had  been 
killed  by  Herod,  and  some  thought  that  Jesus  was  John  the 
Baptist  risen.  Others  thought  that  he  was  the  forerunner  of 
the  Kingdom,  Elijah;  others  saw  in  him  the  spirit  of  the  old 
prophecy  returned  to  Israel.  These  were  the  things  men  saw 
in  Jesus  from  the  outsiders'  point  of  view. 

Then  he  asked  them,  suddenly  and  abruptly,  "and  what  do 
you  say?"  One  can  imagine  a  moment's  tense  silence.  It 
was  such  a  moment  as  might  focus  and  crystallize,  so  to  speak, 
all  the  fleeting  impressions  of  the  past  months  of  intimate 
intercourse.  They  had  to  ask  themselves,  possibly  for  the 
first  time  definitely,  "who  is  he,  why  are  we  following  him?" 
Peter  came  to  it  first,  quick  and  impressionable,  and  yet 
practical,  "The  Messiah,"  nothing  less  than  that.  But  was 
there  more?  Mark  gives  no  more,  but  both  Matthew  and 
Luke  add  more,  and  Matthew  is  the  fullest,  "the  Messiah,  the 
Son  of  the  living  God."  I  do  not  think  for  myself  that  the 
addition  is  a  later  doctrinal  one.  Its  form  seems  against  such 
a  supposition.  Here  I  give  my  own  point  of  view  for  what 
it  is  worth.  The  Messiah  represented  for  Peter  the  official 
character,  the  position  in  the  Kingdom  which  in  his  own  mind 
he  had  assigned  to  the  one  he  was  following.  But  he  had 
seen  more,  he  had  seen  in  Jesus  such  a  character  that,-  as  he 
sought  to  express  it  in  a  word,  there  came  to  him  the  echo  of 
Christ's  own  description  of  what  the  children  of  the  Kingdom 
should  be,  "that  ye  may  be  sons  of  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven,"  (Matt.  5:45).  That  was  the  character  which  he  had 
seen  in  Jesus,  the  character  of  God  lived  out  among  men.  It 
was  not  that  Peter  had  reached  intellectually  a  position  of 
assent  to  the  Nicene  Creed,  that  he  thought  "thus  of  Trinity." 


THE  COXFESSION  77 

He  was  still  a  Jew,  a  monotheist,  who  would  have  shrunk  with 
horror  from  anything  that  denied  the  central  principle  of 
Judaism,  "the  Lord  thy  God  is  one  God."  But  he  had  seen 
God  in  Christ,  and  said  so.  He  had  realized  only  dimly,  as 
through  a  rift  in  the  clouds  the  far  off  snow  peaks  are  seen, 
that  Christ  was  like  God.  It  may  not  seem  much,  but  it  is 
really  everything. 

Only  Matthew  gives  the  answer  of  Christ  to  Peter,  and  the 
whole  passage,  like  the  great  passage  in  Matt.  II,  is  full  of 
light  on  the  mind  of  Christ. 

It  seems  to  me  as  though  Christ  saw  in  Peter's  words  the 
pledge  and  promise  of  the  harvest,  that  hundredfold  of  which 
the  parable  of  the  Sower  spoke.  It  was  as  if  the  husbandman, 
visiting  the  bare  brown  field  day  after  day,  should  see  at  last 
the  first  blade  of  green  pushing  up  through  the  clods,  and  wel- 
come it  with  joy  that  saw  in  it  the  harvest's  "golden  yield." 

So  Christ  hails  Peter's  words  with  an  outburst  of  joy.  It 
was  the  moment  of  vindication.  His  choice  has  been  vindi- 
cated by  the  Father.  Here  was  one  at  last,  who  unforced,  led 
by  the  same  quiet  way  that  Christ  himself  had  passed  along, 
had  learnt  the  secret  by  the  Spirit's  way  of  living  experience. 
Flesh  and  blood  methods,  rejected  by  Christ  at  the  Tempta- 
tion, had  not  taught  Peter  the  secret.  He  had  learnt  through 
seeing  God  in  Christ  lived  out  in  the  simple  ways  of  com- 
mon life.  It  was  true  that  still  in  his  mind  there  blazed  the 
glorious  vision  of  a  coming  Messiah,  so  that  he  could  hardly 
realize  the  full  significance  of  the  unofficial  addition,  "Son 
of  the  living  God,"  but  it  was  there,  spontaneous  and  unforced, 
and  Christ  welcomes  it  with  a  joy  that  we  cannot  realize. 
It  was  the  living  thread  that  joins  the  experience  of  the  Bap- 
tism, "thou  art  my  Beloved  Son,"  to  the  experience  of  the 
confession  "thou  art  the  Son  of  the  living  God."  Christ 
need  no  longer  say,  "no  man  recognizes  the  Son."  Here  at 
last  was  the  kind  of  recognition  which  he  had  the  faith  and 
courage  to  wait  for,  through  disappointment  and  outward 
failure.     It  was  a  crowning  moment  for  Christ. 

In  our  next  study  we  shall  take  up  the  meaning  of  the  much 
vexed  words  that  follow. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
The  Second  Crisis.    The  Confirmation 


STUDY  XIII 
Passages  for  Daily  Study: 

The  same  as  for  Study  XII  and  in  addition  Deut.  32:4,  15, 
18,  30,  31 ;  Psalm  78 :  35  ;  Isa.  22 :  22,  26 :  4. 

Notes  : 

This  passage  is  of  course  a  crux.  Most  modern  scholars 
regard  it  as  a  later  ecclesiastical  addition.  But  this  is  largely 
due  to  failure  to  understand  the  thoroughly  Jewish  signifi- 
cance and  associations  of  the  expressions  used.  Even  the 
much  controverted  "my  assembly"  becomes  easy  to  under- 
stand, and  no  longer  an  anachronism,  when  put  into  its  proper 
setting.  When  once  we  restore  the  utterances  here  recorded 
to  their  Jewish  historical  setting,  then  their  real  moral  and 
spiritual  value  appears  at  once. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  is  the  meaning  of  Christ's  answer  to  Peter's  con- 

fession? 

2.  Why  does  Christ  change  Peter's  name  here? 

3.  What  does  the  expression  "my  assembly"  mean  in  the 

mind  of  Christ? 

4.  What  is  meant  by  "the  keys  of  the  Kingdom  of  heaven"? 


CHAPTER  XIII 


The    Second    Crisis.       The    Con- 
firmation 


"And  I,  too,  say  unto  thee  that  thou  art  Peter,  and  upon 
this  rock  I  will  build  my  assembly,  and  Hades'  gates  shall  not 
prevail  against  it." 

It  is  not  easy  for  the  Western  mind  to  appreciate  the  sig- 
nificance that  names  always  have  had  and  have  still  for  the 
Oriental.  To  know  a  man's  real  name  is  to  have  power  over 
him,  and  a  change  of  name  is  always  an  event  of  serious 
meaning.  In  the  Old  Testament  we  have  many  changes  of 
name,  and  in  nearly  every  case  the  change  of  name  is  asso- 
ciated with  and  stands  for  a  crisis  of  some  kind  in  the 
person's  history. 

In  this  passage,  in  a  crisis  of  which  we  have  been  trying  to 
understand  the  meaning,  Christ  changes  Simon's  name  to 
Peter,  or  in  Aramaic,  Cephas.  The  first  word  in  this  perplex- 
ing passage  that  calls  for  remark  is  one  that  is  only  too  easily 
passed  over  as  an  insignificant  particle,  the  word  "too,"  prob- 
ably representing  the  emphatic  position  of  the  pronoun  in 
Aramaic.  It  implies  a  distinct  connection,  a  reply  as  it  were, 
to  the  recognition  that  had  awakened  such  a  burst  of  joy- 
ful emotion  in  the  mind  of  Christ.  One  might  paraphrase  its 
force  somewhat  in  this  manner — "You  have  recognized  some- 
thing in  me,  something  that  others  have  not  seen  and  cannot 
see,  and  I  now  too  recognize  in  you  by  that  very  token  some- 
thing new  and  strange,  so  significant  that  I  will  mark  it  by 
changing  your  name." 

There  is  something  implied  here  that  is  easy  to  miss,  and  yet 
it  rests  upon  the  truth  of  human  nature,  it  is  psychologically 
true.  To  appreciate  or  recognize  anything  spiritual,  or  of 
value   in   the   spiritual   realm,   there   must   be   some   common 

Si 


82     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

ground,  some  moral  likeness.  We  have  a  well-known  saying 
in  the  first  epistle  of  John,  "we  shall  be  like  Him,  for  we  shall 
see  Him  as  He  is,"  that  states  this  principle  very  simply.  The 
writer's  point  of  view  is  that  one  cannot  see  God  as  He  really 
is  unless  one  is  morally  like  Him.  So  again  Christ  himself 
had  already  said,  in  laying  down  the  first  principles  of  the 
Kingdom,  "blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see 
God."  Here  we  have  an  example  of  this  principle  actually 
working  itself  out. 

But  to  make  this  clear  we  must  ask  for  a  moment  the  mean- 
ing of  the  change  of  name.  The  well  worn  argument  on  the 
difference  between  irirpos  and  ir^rpa  amounts  to  nothing,  for 
in  Aramaic  it  would  disappear.  Cephas  simply  means  rock,  of 
any  kind  or  size.  The  real  point  is,  what  would  be  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  epithet  under  such  circumstances  to  a  Jewish 
mind?  The  only  way  to  get  at  it  is  to  go  back  to  the  Old 
Testament  associations  of  the  name  "Rock."  The  typical 
passages  given  for  study  in  the  weekly  study  will  show  at 
once  that  the  title  "Rock"  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  names 
of  God.  It  is  the  name  which,  for  the  prophet's  mind,  marked 
the  steadfastness  and  faithfulness  of  God  in  contrast  with 
the  change  and  apostasy  of  His  people,  those  who  had  been 
entrusted  with  the  mission  of  making  His  real  character 
known  in  the  world.  Hence  in  Christ's  mind,  always  travel- 
ing in  the  deepest  channels  of  the  prophet's  thought,  this 
change  of  name  stood  for  something  of  immense  importance. 
Whatever  form  in  time  the  Kingdom  might  take — imme- 
diate, earthly,  Jewish,  catastrophic — this  was  the  great  thing, 
that  through  the  way  God  had  marked  out,  a  man  had  been 
brought  to  see  God  revealed  in  Christ,  showing  that  the  man 
himself  had  so  far  been  made  like  God.  Peter  recognizes 
God's  character  in  Christ,  Christ  replies  by  recognizing  God's 
character  in  Peter,  and  marks  it  by  that  deeply  significant 
name.  Nor  is  that  all.  Peter  was  not  to  be  the  only  one.  He 
was,  to  use  the  metaphor  of  the  harvest,  just  the  first  blade 
of  corn  to  appear,  the  others  would  come  as  surely.  Now  the 
word  "assembly"  has  not  the  associations  that  the  word 
"church"  has  for  us  today.  Like  the  epithet  "rock,"  the  word 
"assembly"  had  a  very  definite  meaning  for  a  Jewish  mind. 
It  was  the  word  which  represented  the  nation  of  Israel  from 
a  religious  point  of  view.  They  were  the  Lord's  assembly, 
bound  by  common  ties  of  past  history,  present  religious  cere- 


THE  CONFIRMATION  83 

monies,  and  a  common  future  hope.  From  the  prophet's 
point  of  view,  as  an  assembly,  they  had  been  marked  out 
from  the  other  nations  for  the  definite  object  of  showing  the 
real  character  of  God.  "This  people  have  I  formed  for  my- 
self, that  they  may  show  forth  my  praise."  But  in  the  same 
way,  from  the  prophet's  point  of  view,  the  "assembly"  of 
Israel  had  failed  miserably  in  its  purpose.  "The  name  of  God 
is  blasphemed  among  the  Gentiles  on  your  account"  is  the 
prophetic  verdict. 

But  now  Christ  sees,  resting  upon  a  new  foundation,  a  new 
community  arising.  It  was,  in  his  prophetic  vision,  a  com- 
munity of  people  possessing  the  real  character  of  God,  like 
God,  so  that  he  could  speak  of  it  as  "his  assembly"  in  contrast 
with  the  still  existing  historical  "assembly"  of  Judaism  that 
now  stood  self-condemned  by  its  inability  to  recognize  him. 
Death  could  not  destroy  the  permanence  of  anything  possess- 
ing God's  character,  hence  death,  under  the  figure  of  Sheol's 
gates,  the  gates  of  that  gloomy  underworld  where  the  dead 
passed  away  from  the  presence  of  God  and  the  sense  of 
communion  with  Him,  death  could  not  touch  this  new 
assembly.  Christ  himself  according  to  the  flesh  might  die, 
but  God's  character  wrought  out  in  man  was  eternal.  The 
spirit  cannot  die. 

But  all  this  is  directly  associated  with  Christ's  vision  of  the 
Kingdom,  and  he  goes  on  to  say,  "I  will  give  to  thee  the  keys 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  bind 
on  earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt 
loose  on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven." 

Again  we  have  to  go  back  to  the  Old  Testament  for  the 
true  meaning  of  the  metaphor.  We  associate  it  with  the  power 
to  admit  and  exclude,  and  every  one  knows  the  rather  ludi- 
crous associations  that  have  grown  up  round  Peter  and  his 
keys. 

But  in  Isa.  22 :  22,  the  passage  from  which  the  metaphor  is 
taken,  we  can  see  that  the  thought  is  the  administration  of 
the  power  of  the  kingdom.  The  new  vizier,  Eliakim,  was  to 
assume  the  administrative  responsibility  in  the  place  of 
Shebna.  The  point  that  is  in  Christ's  mind,  evidently  grown 
clearer  since  the  crisis  of  the  Temptation,  is  the  connection 
between  the  power  of  the  kingdom,  that  is  God's  power,  and 
the  character  needed  to  use  it.  Christ's  delegation  of  the 
power  is  not  to  Peter  personally,  with  any  thought  of  primacy, 


84     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

but  follows  on  the  recognition  of  God's  character  in  him  as 
the  pledge  of  an  "assembly"  of  people  also  possessing  that 
character.  It  is  as  though,  at  this  crisis,  Christ  reached  a 
mountain  top,  after  traveling  for  a  long  time  in  the  valley. 
From  the  summit  he  could  now  see  the  way  before  him.  A 
number  of  things  became  clear.  The  spiritual  methods  chosen 
at  the  Temptation  are  vindicated,  but  also  it  has  become 
increasingly  clear  that  this  spiritual  way,  vindicated  by  God, 
means  a  divergence  of  immense  importance  from  the  Jewish 
national  hope  of  the  Kingdom  in  the  form  in  which  Christ 
knew  it,  and  must  to  some  extent  have  shared  it.  For  the 
first  time  Christ  speaks  plainly  of  his  death,  and  for  the 
first  time  of  resurrection.  What  this  meant  for  Christ  we 
must  discuss  later. 

But  in  reaching  this  crisis,  Christ  has  reached  the  point 
where  God's  way  was  sufficiently  clear  to  him  to  set  his  mind 
at  rest  about  the  future  of  the  Kingdom.  The  assembly,  his 
assembly,  would  be  built,  and  death  could  never  overwhelm  it. 


CHAPTER   XIV 
The  Transfiguration 


STUDY  XIV 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  17:1-13;  Mark  9:1-13;  Luke  9:28-36. 

Notes  : 

This  study  offers  a  good  deal  of  difficulty,  but  the  way  in 
which  we  approached  the  Baptism  and  the  Temptation  will 
help  us  here.  Again  we  have  to  remember  the  effect  of  trans- 
mission upon  the  story  of  such  an  experience.  The  suggestion 
here  is  that  the  experience  is  in  the  first  place  a  spiritual 
experience  of  Christ's,  arising  out  of  his  own  faith,  and 
directly  connected  with  his  own  sense  of  the  value  of  Peter's 
confession  for  himself.  In  some  way,  perhaps  through 
Christ's  prayer,  this  experience  was  in  part  shared  by  the 
sleeping  disciples,  and  profoundly  impressed  them.  We  have 
to  consider  its  relation  backward  to  the  Confession  and  for- 
ward to  the  Resurrection.  Also  the  significance  of  the  dis- 
ciples' question  about  Elias,  and  Christ's  injunction  to  keep 
silence  about  the  vision  until  after  the  Resurrection  must  be 
carefully  considered. 

Questions  : 

1.  Compare    the    circumstances    of     the     Transfiguration 

Vision  with  those  of  the  Baptism. 

2.  What  is  the  meaning  of  Moses  and  Elias  in  the  vision? 

3.  What  light  does  the  question  about  Elias  throw  on  the 

mind  of  the  disciples? 

4.  Why  was  silence  as  to  the  vision  enjoined? 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Transfiguration 

The  passing  of  the  second  crisis  brings  us  to  the  last  period 
of  Christ's  life.  The  period  which  it  closes  leaves  us  with 
certain  clear  impressions.  The  disciples  have  so  far  ad- 
vanced as  to  recognize  Christ  as  the  Messiah,  and,  what  to 
Christ  means  more,  to  recognize  his  likeness  to  God,  even  if 
dimly  and  without  any  clear  sense  of  what  it  meant.  For 
Christ  himself  the  way  has  so  far  become  clear  that  he  sees 
death  at  the  end.  The  Kingdom  cannot  come  without  his 
death.  He  must  lose  his  life  to  find  it.  And  lastly  Christ 
begins  to  leave  his  disciples  behind.  He  passes  into  a  region 
where  they  cannot  follow  him.  The  divergence  between  his 
mind  and  theirs  becomes  daily  more  marked,  as  we  shall  see. 

But  this  last  period  opens  with  a  very  remarkable  expe- 
rience which  seems  very  closely  connected  with  what  had 
taken  place  at  Csesarea  Philippi.  During  the  days  that  had 
elapsed  between  the  confession  and  the  vision  on  the  Mount 
there  must  have  been  much  thought  in  the  disciples'  minds 
concerning  Christ's  words  to  Peter.  The  closing  words  espe- 
cially, emphasizing  the  nearness  of  the  Kingdom,  would  <  have 
occupied  a  large  place  in  their  thoughts,  while  the  darker  side, 
the  mention  of  death,  remained  unintelligible  to  them.  Then, 
when  a  week  had  passed,  Jesus  chose  Peter  and  two  others, 
James  and  John,  to  spend  a  night  with  him  on  some  moun- 
tain. There  Christ,  as  his  custom  was  in  times  of  crisis,  fell 
to  prayer,  while  Peter  and  his  companions  fell  asleep.  The 
precise  significance  of  what  happened  on  the  mountain  is  not 
easy  to  understand.  Christ  himself  called  it  a  vision  (8pa/j.a). 
Perhaps  in  some  such  way  as  the  experience  at  the  Baptism 
was  shared  by  John  the  Baptist,  the  disciples  shared  the  expe- 
rience of  Christ  on  the  mountain.  There  came  to  him,  agon- 
izing in  the  thought  of  death  looming  up  before  him,  once 

87 


88     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

more  the  sense  of  the  Father's  approval  of  his  decision.  Not 
only  so,  but  there  broke  in  upon  him,  clothed  in  such  a  form 
as  visions  must  necessarily  take  when  spiritual  things  are 
embodied  in  earthly  symbols,  the  sense  of  the  fruit  of  death, 
the  triumph  of  the  spirit,  the  Father's  answer  to  his  yielding 
up  of  his  life.  Glorious  and  immortal,  the  fulfilment  of  the 
law  and  the  prophets,  he  tastes  the  anticipation  of  the  joy 
set  before  him  which  enabled  him  to  endure  the  cross.  In 
some  way  the  vision  pierced  the  sleep  of  the  disciples,  and 
they  shared  it,  although  how  much  belongs  to  Christ's  expe- 
rience, and  how  much  to  the  form  in  which  they  were  think- 
ing of  the  Kingdom,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  We  can  gather 
clearly  from  the  conversation  that  took  place  as  they  left  the 
mountain,  that  what  they  had  experienced  there  had  con- 
firmed their  belief  that  Christ  was  the  coming  Messiah,  the 
glorious  heir  of  the  Kingdom  that  they  felt  to  be  so  near  at 
hand. 

But  the  experience  conflicted  with  certain  of  their  current 
thoughts  about  the  Kingdom.  If  Christ,  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
as  they  knew  him,  was  really  the  Messiah  of  the  law  and  the 
prophets,  where  was  the  forerunner,  where  was  Elias  whom 
the  scribes  had  always  maintained  must  come  first?  They 
raise  the  question,  and  Christ's  answer  shows  how  he  had 
been  thinking  of  the  things  that  had  happened.  The  series 
of  events  from  the  first  crisis  and  onwards,  as  we  have  traced 
them,  had  profoundly  influenced  Christ's  thoughts.  He  had 
told  the  multitudes  during  the  time  of  suspense  in  Matt,  n, 
that  John  the  Baptist  was  the  forerunner,  Elias,  adding  his 
challenge  for  the  first  time  there,  "he  that  hath  ears  to  hear 
let  him  hear."    Then  the  news  of  John's  death  had  come. 

Now  we  see  that  Christ  had  accepted  this,  although  it  ran 
wholly  counter  to  Jewish  expectation,  as  God's  way.  It  was 
for  the  forerunner  to  prepare  the  way  of  the  Lord.  Hence  if 
the  forerunner's  portion  was  death  and  darkness  and  tragic 
failure  here,  that  must  be  the  way  of  the  Lord,  the  way 
Christ  had  already  chosen  for  himself.  So  he  tells  the 
uncomprehending  disciples  that  Elias  had  come,  that  he  had 
not  been  recognized,  and  had  been  killed  by  the  religious 
leaders  of  the  day.  "So,"  he  adds,  "shall  the  Son  of  Alan 
suffer  of  them."  The  passage  lets  a  flood  of  light  in  upon 
the  way  Christ  had  traveled.  But  all  that  the  three  disciples 
got  out  of  it  at  present  was  the  certainty  that  John  the  Baptist 


THE  TRANSFIGURATION  89 

was  regarded  as  Elias  by  their  Master.  The  idea  of  a  Messiah 
who  should  die  was  simply  incomprehensible  to  them  as  yet. 
But  the  Transfiguration,  like  the  parables,  was  an  expe- 
rience, perhaps  the  fruit  of  Christ's  prayers,  intended  for  the 
future.  They  did  not  understand  the  parables  yet,  nor  did 
they  understand  what  the  Transfiguration  meant.  They  seized 
what  agreed  with  their  own  hopes,  and  let  the  rest  go.  So 
Christ  tells  them  to  be  silent  about  the  vision  for  the  present. 
If  they  had  noised  it  about,  it  would  have  had  just  the  opposite 
effect  from  that  which  it  was  intended  to  have.  It  was  not 
meant  for  "a  sign  from  heaven"  such  as  Christ  had  already 
refused  for  himself  at  the  Temptation.  It  was  for  the 
strengthening  and  confirmation  of  faith.  The  vision  itself 
sprang  out  of  Christ's  faith  and  could  have  its  proper  value  for 
the  disciples  only  when  they  had  learnt,  at  a  later  day,  what 
that  faith  really  was  for  themselves. 


CHAPTER    XV 
The  Resurrection  in  the  Mind  of  Christ 


STUDY  XV 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.   16:21-29;   17:22-23;  20:17-19;   Mark  8:31-38;   9:9, 
30-32;    10:32-34;    Luke    9U3-45;    18:31-34;    II    Cor. 
4:  13-14;  Heb.  5:7-10. 

Notes  : 

In  this  study  the  same  difficulty  faces  us  again  in  its  deepest 
form.  The  Resurrection  is  not  often  approached  from  the 
side  of  Christ's  experience.  It  is  not  even  thought  of  as 
affecting  Christ's  human  experience  at  all.  Here  we  are  to 
try  to  estimate  the  place  of  the  Resurrection  in  this  expe- 
rience of  Christ.  It  is  to  be  considered  here  as  a  hope  spring- 
ing out  of  the  faith  of  Christ.  The  business  of  the  student 
is  to  see  whether  such  a  point  of  view  does  not  bring  these 
utterances  of  Christ  in  a  new  way  into  line  with  the  whole 
current  of  Christ's  experience  as  we  have  been  tracing  it  out. 
The  significance  of  such  an  attitude  towards  the  Resurrection 
will  appear  later  when  we  come  to  the  end  of  our  study. 

Questions  : 

1.  Why  does  Christ  make  no  mention  of  his  death  until 

after  Peter's  confession? 

2.  How  did  the  thought  of  the  Resurrection  arise  in  the 

mind  of  Christ?     (cf.  Isa.  26:  19;  Dan.  12:2-3;  Heb. 

ii:35)- 

3.  Consider  the  difference  between  regarding  Christ's  atti- 

tude towards  his  Resurrection  as  faith,  and  as  fore- 
knowledge. 

4.  What  is  meant  by  "the  same  spirit  of  faith"  in  II  Cor. 

4:i3? 


CHAPTER  XV 

The   Resurrection  in  the   Mind  of 

Christ 

We  saw  that  it  was  not  until  after  Caesarea  Philippi  that 
Jesus  began  to  speak  to  his  disciples  of  his  death,  and  in 
nearly  ever)-  case  he  adds  the  mysterious  words — "and  the 
third  day  rise  again." 

Here  we  face  one  of  our  fundamental  questions.  What 
does  this  utterance  mean?  We  have  again  to  deal  with  a 
difficulty  that  met  us  in  discussing  the  temptation  and  the 
moment  of  self-revelation  in  Matt.  II.  25-30.  One  feels,  as 
with  the  Temptation,  that  if  Christ  knew  certainly  that  death 
was  for  him  a  mere  incident  in  a  path,  every  detail  of  which 
was  already  known  to  him  from  eternity,  and  that  he  would 
rise  again  as  a  foregone  conclusion,  then  death  was  not  for 
Christ  the  supreme  test  of  faith.  It  could  not  be  to  him 
what  it  is  to  us. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  lines  we  have  followed  in 
trying  to  understand  the  mind  of  Christ  have  in  any  way 
given  us  a  true  presentment  of  Christ,  then  we  may  hope  to 
find  help  here  in  looking  at  the  position  from  the  same  point 
of  view. 

The  question  really  is  whether  Christ's  words  about  his 
Resurrection  are  the  utterance  of  divine  foreknowledge  or 
the  expression  of  a  faith  that  went  further  than  the  most 
daring  venture  of  faith  yet  known  in  the  history  of  man's 
relations  with  God. 

We  have  seen  how  Christ  accepted  the  disappointment  of 
the  crisis  in  Matt.  11.  Up  to  that  point  he  had  clearly  expected 
that,  as  a  result  of  his  work — the  preaching  of  the  coming 
Kingdom  and  its  true  character,  continuing  John's  preparatory 
message — the  hearts  of  the  people  would  be  so  stirred  to 
repentance  and  readiness  for  the  Kingdom  that  God  would  be 
able  to  intervene,  and  before  the  return  of  the  disciples  from 
their  mission  the  end  of  the  old  order  would  have  come. 

93 


94     CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

The  crisis  came,  and  in  the  light  of  it  and  subsequent 
events,  Christ  saw  that  he  had  to  travel  further  and  along 
a  harder  path.  The  significance  of  John's  death  had  been 
borne  in  upon  him.  He  began  to  see  in  the  light  of  this 
tragic  event,  and  perhaps  following  along  the  lines  of  the  53rd 
of  Isaiah  which  the  Jews  had  never  understood  in  a  Messianic 
sense,  that  the  Kingdom  could  come  only  through  his  death. 
The  suggestion  is  indeed  worthy  of  consideration  that  Christ 
had  begun  to  regard  his  death  as  in  some  way  directly  con- 
nected with  the  preliminary  "woes"  which  in  current  belief 
must  usher  in  the  Kingdom,  the  "great  tribulation"  or  rreipacrfxos 
of  the  early  eschatology.  He  may  have  regarded  his  death 
as  a  means  of  escape  for  those  who  were  to  enter  into  the 
Kingdom. 

But  still  the  question  remained  for  him  of  his  own  place  in 
the  Kingdom  and  its  future.  Already  the  belief  had  grown 
up  in  Jewish  circles  that  the  righteous  dead,  the  saints  of  old, 
and  the  martyrs  were  to  rise  again  to  share  the  blessings  of 
the  earthly  kingdom.  Christ  laid  hold  of  this  belief  with  the 
same  intensity  of  faith  and  insight  that  we  have  watched  in 
him  throughout  his  life,  and  saw  that  this  must  be  God's  way 
of  vindication.  Naturally  the  belief  in  the  Resurrection  took 
the  form  in  which  it  was  current  at  that  time,  but  the  under- 
lying fact  was  that  Christ  laid  hold  of  the  moral  necessity  of 
God's  intervention.  He  had  already  experienced  this  inter- 
vention, vindicating  his  choice  of  the  way  of  the  Spirit,  and 
now  he  sees  that  he  must  put  God  to  a  final  test,  the  ultimate 
vindication.  His  Resurrection  should  be  the  Parousia,  the 
moment  which  brings  in  the  Kingdom.  He  would  enter  into 
the  Kingdom  by  the  only  way  that  lay  open  to  John  the  Baptist 
and  all  the  prophets  who  had  trodden  the  path  of  faith.  Vari- 
ous details  may  remain  uncertain,  the  reason  for  the  "three 
days,"  and  other  points.  But  the  main  thing  stands  out  clear, 
and  will  come  out  still  more  strikingly  as  we  study  the  mind 
of  Christ  during  these  last  days  of  stress,  that  Christ's  vision 
of  the  Resurrection  was  the  vision  of  faith,  the  divinest  faith 
that  the  world  has  known. 

These  last  two  chapters  may  be  considered  as  a  link  between 
the  experience  of  the  second  period  of  the  ministry,  and  that 
last  journey  to  Jerusalem  which  we  are  to  study  in  the  last 
division  of  our  subject. 


FOURTH  DIVISION 
THE    FINAL    CRISIS 


CHAPTER   XVI 
The  Way  to  Jerusalem.  The  Mind  of  the  Disciples 


STUDY  XVI 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 

Matt.  19:27-30;  20:20-28;  Mark  9:33~37',  10:23-45;  Luke 
18:15-17,  34- 

Notes  : 

The  object  of  this  study  is  twofold.  First,  to  bring  out 
clearly  the  state  of  mind  of  the  disciples  during  the  last 
period  of  Christ's  life.  If  this  was  the  attitude  of  those  who 
had  been  so  close  to  Christ,  and  had  had  the  opportunity  of 
understanding  his  point  of  view,  we  can  see  in  some  measure 
what  the  popular  mind  must  have  been.  Second,  by  contrast 
to  throw  into  relief  the  way  in  which  Christ  was  looking 
upon  this  last  journey  and  its  issue.  One  often  hears  about 
the  stupidity  and  slowness  and  selfishness  of  the  disciples. 
The  real  wonder  would  have  been  if  they  had  been  able  to 
understand  in  the  smallest  degree  the  amazing  faith  and 
audacity  of  Christ's  conception,  so  new  and  strange  it  was. 

Questions  : 

1.  Why  have  we  no  mention  of  the  strife  among  the  dis- 

ciples as  to  which  should  be  the  greatest  until  the  last 
journey? 

2.  What  can  be  gathered  as  to  the  disciples'  state  of  mind 

at  this  time  from  Matt.  16:22;  18:1;  19:27;  20:21? 

3.  Consider    the   meaning   of    the   two   parables    in    Matt. 

18:21-35;  20:  1-6  in  relation  to  this  attitude  of  mind. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

The  Way  to  Jerusalem.     The  Mind 
of  the  Disciples 

The  Synoptic  narrative  is  clear  that  from  Caesarea  Philippi 
the  mind  of  Christ  is  turned  towards  Jerusalem.  It  would 
also  appear  that  the  journey  up  to  Jerusalem  begins  from  the 
point  where  they  turn  south  again  after  reaching  Caesarea. 
There  are  many  difficulties  in  detail,  e.  g.,  the  question  of  a 
Perean  ministry,  in  reconstructing  the  course  of  the  journey, 
nor  is  it  always  easy  to  decide  whether  an  incident  or  saying 
belongs  to  this  last  period.  But  fortunately  the  main  point  is 
clear — we  can  follow  the  mind  of  Christ  in  its  increasing  sense 
of  crisis,  and  in  the  divergence  from  the  disciples  that  now 
becomes  very  marked. 

There  is  a  striking  saying  in  Luke  which  almost  certainly 
belongs  to  this  last  period.  "I  have  a  baptism  to  be  baptized 
with,  and  how  am  I  straitened  till  it  be  accomplished"  (12:  50). 
If  we  compare  it  with  the  incident  in  Matt.  20:20-28,  which 
also  belongs  to  the  last  journey,  it  will  serve  to  illustrate  the 
subject  with  which  we  are  dealing  in  this  chapter,  the  way  in 
which  the  disciples  regarded  this  journey. 

In  our  next  chapter  we  shall  take  up  the  subject  of  Christ's 
own  attitude  towards  what  lay  before  him  in  Jerusalem.  But 
first  we  have  to  examine  the  passages  which  show  what  the 
disciples  were  thinking  at  this  time.  The  confession  at 
Caesarea  Philippi  had  served  to  bring  before  them  all  distinctly 
the  question  of  Christ's  Messiahship.  No  doubt  they  debated 
among  themselves  such  questions  as  we  saw  were  raised  by 
the  Transfiguration,  the  question  of  Elias  and  his  relation  to 
John  the  Baptist.  But  it  is  quite  clear  that  Christ's  repeated 
statements  about  his  dying  at  Jerusalem  and  his  rising  again 
were   a   complete   enigma   to    them.      Such   a   point   of   view 

99 


ioo  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

would  not  fit  in  at  all  with  any  of  the  current  expectations  of 
the  Kingdom.  It  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized  that  the 
Jews  knew  nothing  of  a  dying  Messiah.  The  only  passage  in 
a  Jewish  apocalypse  in  which  such  a  thought  occurs  only 
shows  how  far  removed  was  the  point  of  view  which  Christ 
had  now  come  to  entertain.  In  this  passage,  after  the  Messi- 
anic kingdom  has  been  set  up  and  has  lasted  400  years,  the 
Messiah  and  his  companions  die,  and  all  the  world  returns  to 
primeval  silence  for  seven  days,  then  follows  the  final  judg- 
ment. Even  this  idea  stands  quite  alone,  and  is  obviously 
totally  different  from  any  thought  of  the  Messiah's  death 
being  necessary  to  introduce  the  Kingdom.  The  Targum  of 
Jonathan  on  Isaiah  which  may  represent  a  very  ancient  Jewish 
exegesis  of  Isaiah  53,  also  illustrates  the  same  point.  In 
this  Targum,  or  Aramaic  paraphrase,  of  Isaiah  53,  all  the 
passages  which  speak  of  humiliation  and  suffering  are  most 
skilfully  transferred  to  the  chastisement  of  Israel,  or  the 
punishment  of  their  enemies;  only  the  passages  of  glory  are 
assigned  to  the  Messiah. 

Hence  we  can  understand  how  hard  it  was  for  the  dis- 
ciples, when  once  they  had  accepted  the  belief  that  their 
Master  was  the  Messiah,  to  find  any  place  in  their  minds  for 
the  thought  that  Christ  reiterates  so  often  during  this  final 
journey. 

In  Matt.  16:22,  after  the  very  first  mention  of  death  and 
suffering,  Peter  rejects  the  thought  as  impossible,  "God  be 
good  to  thee,  Lord,  this  thing  cannot  happen  to  thee."  It  was 
quite  inconceivable  to  him.  At  times  the  attitude  of  Christ, 
almost  menacing  as  it  seemed  to  them,  threw  them  into  gloom 
and  depression,  Mark  10 :  32.  But  they  quickly  rallied,  and  it 
is  not  difficult  for  us  to  reconstruct  their  point  of  view.  They 
believed  in  the  visions  of  the  prophets  and  apocalyptists,  they 
believed  in  the  very  near  approach  of  the  Kingdom  which 
they  themselves  had  been  sent  out  to  preach.  They  felt  that 
they  had  staked  everything  on  the  belief  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  the  future  king  of  the  new  Kingdom.  Hence  their 
minds  turn  continually,  and  sometimes  in  a  way  that  seems 
to  us  grotesque,  to  the  material  rewards  which  would  be 
theirs.  There  is  no  need  to  minimize  the  effect  of  the  spirit- 
ual side  of  Christ's  teaching,  and  of  his  life  upon  them,  that 
bore  fruit  later.  But  now,  as  the  tension  of  expectation 
deepens,   and   they   feel  that  this   journey  to  Jerusalem   will 


THE  MIND  OF  THE  DISCIPLES        101 

end  in  the  establishment  of  the  promised  Kingdom,  they  throw 
away  resolutely  everything  that  points  in  another  direction, 
and  concentrate  upon  the  places  and  power  that  they  will  cer- 
tainly have  in  a  very  short  time.  James  and  John  feel  that 
there  is  a  danger  of  Peter's  outshining  them,  and  try  to  secure 
the  best  places  at  once.  They  wish  to  call  down  fire  from 
heaven  and  consume  the  inhospitable  Samaritans  who  will 
not  receive  their  Master  on  his  way  to  the  throne.  Even  to 
the  very  end,  to  the  Last  Supper,  as  we  shall  see,  this  atti- 
tude of  mind  persisted.  The  events  connected  with  the 
triumphal  entry,  as  it  is  called,  must  have  greatly  stimulated 
their  hopes. 

It  is  necessary  to  grasp  this  point  of  view  in  order  to  ap- 
preciate fully  the  divergence  and  the  contrast  which  the  mind 
of  Christ  presents.    This  we  shall  take  up  in  our  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
The  Way  to  Jerusalem.    The  Mind  of  Christ 


STUDY  XVII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
As  in  Study  XVI  and  also  Luke  12:49-53;  13:22-35. 

Notes  : 

The  point  of  view  in  this  study  may  offer  some  difficulty. 
But  by  a  loyal  acceptance  of  the  human  limitations  in  Christ's 
experience,  we  shall  reach  a  far  deeper  conception  of  his 
extraordinary  faith.  The  more  the  temporal  element,  the  his- 
torical setting  in  Christ's  life  is  seen,  the  more  clearly  will 
the  eternal  element  appear  in  contrast.  As  many  of  Christ's 
sayings  as  possible  should  be  read  with  this  in  view,  especially 
those  belonging  to  the  later  period  of  his  life.  The  list  given 
for  study  is  only  typical  and  by  no  means  exhaustive.  Too 
much  care  and  thought  cannot  be  given  to  the  most  important 
part  of  our  study. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  light  do  the  above  passages  throw  on  Christ's  mind 

as  he  went  up  to  Jerusalem? 

2.  What  reasons  had  Christ  for  expecting  that  his  visit  to 

Jerusalem  would  end  in  his  death? 

3.  Why   should   he   speak   of   what   lay   before   him   as   a 

baptism  ? 

4.  Consider  the  meaning  of  the  words  "How  am  I  strait- 

ened" Luke  12 :  50. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

The  Way  to  Jerusalem.     The  Mind 

of  Christ 

To  reconstruct  the  mind  of  the  disciples  at  this  critical  time 
is  not  difficult.  Their  attitude  was  a  simple  one,  arising 
naturally  from  their  environment.  But  when  we  try  to  pierce 
behind  the  fragmentary  records,  to  recover  something  of  what 
Christ  was  experiencing  during  this  last  journey,  the  task  is 
far  harder.  Yet  there  are  many  sayings  that  will  help  us. 
But  first  we  must  ask  some  questions.  Probably  they  will  not 
all  be  answered,  but  it  is  no  small  gain  to  have  learnt  to  ask 
questions.  We  have  to  ask  why  Christ  thought  his  death  was 
necessary,  in  spite  of  contemporary  belief.  We  want  to  know, 
if  possible,  how  far  Christ  saw  before  him  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom,  how  soon  and  in  what  form  he  expected  the  King- 
dom to  come.  These  are  not  idle  questions,  but  questions 
which  must  be  asked,  and  to  which  some  kind  of  tentative 
answers  must  be  found  if  we  are  to  get  back  in  any  way  to 
the  real  mind  of  Christ  as  he  pushed  on  along  this  new  and 
fateful  path. 

First  of  all,  there  are  several  things  we  can  gather  from  the 
earliest  passage  in  which  Christ  speaks  plainly  about  his  death, 
in  the  scene  after  the  confession  at  Csesarea.  Christ  saw  there 
that  the  basis  of  the  new  assembly,  recognized  by  him  as  God's 
answer  to  his  resolute  adherence  to  the  harder  way  of  faith 
which  he  had  chosen  at  the  Temptation,  was  laid  beyond  the 
power  of  death  to  touch — Hades'  gates  should  not  overwhelm 
it.  Further,  his  stern  rebuke  to  Peter  shows  that  he  looked 
upon  his  death  as  "God's  things,"  in  contrast  to  Peter's 
expectation,  "the  things  of  men."  His  death,  then,  was  in 
some  way  directly  connected  with  God's  way  of  the  Kingdom. 
The  words  that  follow  show  that  he  had  come  to  think  of 

I05 


106  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

losing  one's  life  as  the  fundamental  principle,  the  law  of  the 
Kingdom,  so  to  speak.  Whoever  tried  to  keep  his  life  would 
lose  it,  although  he  might  gain  the  whole  world,  but  whoever 
was  willing  to  lose  his  life,  in  losing  it  would  find  it.  Now 
clearly  this  expresses  something  of  what  Christ  had  already 
been  experiencing,  in  yielding  to  the  Father's  will,  and  giving 
up  the  particular  form  of  the  Kingdom  hope  which  he  had 
held  at  first ;  he  had  found  a  better  way,  and  now  he  inter- 
prets his  experience  as  the  way  for  those  who  would  follow. 
We  saw  that  outside  events  had  been  converging  on  this  point. 
John's  death  and  the  failure  of  the  first  mission — all  had 
helped  to  make  clear  for  Christ  the  way  which  now  seems  to 
us  almost  a  matter  of  course ;  we  cannot  easily  realize  that 
it  was  really  a  question  of  choice.  Now  in  this  passage  the 
choice  and  the  struggle  it  involved  come  out  clearly.  In  the 
Temptation  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  had  passed  before  the 
mind  of  Christ  and  had  been  rejected;  here  again  the  vision 
of  the  world  is  reflected  as  in  a  lightning  flash  in  that  awful 
saying,  "what  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole 
world  and  lose  his  life?"  There  is  expressed  Christ's  own 
experience,  his  horror  of  the  abyss  that  lay  on  one  side  of 
his  choice.  For  him  life  lay  in  the  doing  of  the  will  of  God, 
the  rest  was  God's  business.  So  we  can  gather,  even  if  only 
in  a  dim  way,  that  through  external  events,  such  as  John's 
death,  through  the  influence  of  that  side  of  the  prophetic 
teaching  represented  by  Isa.  53,  and  by  the  gradual  develop- 
ment of  that  line  of  thought  which  had  begun  at  the  Baptism, 
Christ  had  come  to  look  upon  his  death  as  the  will  of  God, 
as  John's  had  been,  and  as  part  of  God's  plan  for  bringing  in 
the  Kingdom. 

Then,  as  has  already  been  suggested,  Christ  seems  to  have 
come  to  regard  his  death  as  accomplishing  something.  Of 
course  the  sayings  in  Matt.  20:28,  "to  give  his  life  a  ransom 
for  many,"  and  later  at  the  Supper,  "this  is  my  blood,  the 
blood  of  the  new  covenant  which  is  poured  out  for  many,  for 
the  forgiveness  of  sins,"  Matt.  26:28,  have  received  a  wider 
interpretation  in  the  light  of  subsequent  history,  as  the  Church 
perceived  the  fuller  meaning  of  the  death  of  Christ.  But  in 
trying  to  get  at  the  meaning  of  such  sayings  in  the  mind  of 
Christ  we  have  to  be  careful  not  to  bring  in  the  later  theolog- 
ical interpretation.  We  know  that  the  thought  of  the  great 
tribulation,  the  -n-eipaafibs  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which  is  often 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST  loy 

found  in  Christ's  sayings,  was  one  of  the  fixed  elements  in  the 
expectation  of  the  Kingdom.  Only  a  few,  a  remnant  would 
come  safely  through  this  time  of  unparalleled  trial.  The 
prayer  "lead  us  not  into  temptation,"  the  exhortation,  "pray 
that  ye  enter  not  into  temptation,"  had  a  far  more  definite 
meaning  than  we  can  understand  now.  And  Christ  had  come 
to  think  of  his  death  as  a  ransom,  a  means  of  escape,  for 
those  who  were  destined  to  be  his  companions  in  the  new  age. 
While  they  were  thinking  how  they  might  secure  the  best 
places,  he  was  realizing  daily  more  intensely  that  God's  way 
was  the  way  of  service  and  of  death.  But  none  the  less  the 
Kingdom  was  near  at  hand.  He  would  drink  the  new  wine 
of  the  Kingdom  with  the  very  same  companions  who  shared 
the  Paschal  meal  with  him.  There  were  those  who  would 
not  taste  of  death  till  they  saw  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in 
his  Kingdom.  That  generation  would  not  pass  till  all  was 
fulfilled.  He  did  not  know  himself  the  day  and  the  hour, 
but  the  Father  knew,  and  he  was  at  least  certain  of  this,  that 
immediately  beyond  the  death  whose  shadow  now  lay  dark 
upon  his  path  there  was  the  glory  of  the  coming  Kingdom. 

But  as  to  the  details  of  the  future  Kingdom  we  have 
little  but  the  outlines  of  the  prophet's  expectation,  the  gather- 
ing of  the  elect,  the  judgment  of  the  nations,  and  the  bliss  of 
the  righteous  in  the  Father's  Kingdom. 

Another  element  in  Christ's  experience  is  expressed  in  the 
saying  already  quoted  from  Luke  12 :  50,  "how  am  I  straitened 
till  it  be  accomplished."  The  link  of  thought  seems  to  be 
with  the  first  Baptism,  the  lowly  gate  by  which  he  had  entered 
the  narrow  path  of  faith.  Now  he  sees  before  him  a  second 
Baptism,  a  narrower  gate  to  be  entered  by  a  more  terrible 
act  of  choice,  but  which  would  finally  liberate  his  cabined 
spirit.  He  would,  he  felt,  break  through  into  a  larger  sphere 
of  action.  This  feeling  of  growing  straitness  is  reflected  in 
two  incidents  recorded  only  by  Mark,  and  omitted  by  the 
later  Evangelists  probably  from  reverential  motives,  in  which 
Christ  finds  a  difficulty,  a  hindrance,  in  the  exercise  of  his 
power,  the  healing  of  the  man  with  the  impediment  in  his 
speech,  and  the  blind  man,  Mark  7:31-37,  8:22-26,  cf.  also 
Mark  6:5,  6.  We  shall  find  more  light  on  this  subject  as  we 
go  on  to  deal  with  various  incidents  of  the  journey,  but  we 
have  the  main  features  so  far  of  the  landscape  as  Christ 
saw  it.     It  is  a  country  of  descent,  going  down  into  a  valley 


108  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

with  towering  walls  of  rock  overhanging,  growing  darker 
and  darker  as  the  way  gets  narrower,  and  no  outlet  is  visible. 
But  there  must  be  a  way  out,  if  God  is  God.  That  was  the 
essential  thing  in  Christ's  mind.  He  was  staking  everything 
on  the  faithfulness  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
The  Triumphal  Entry 


STUDY  XVIII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  21:1-11;   Mark   ii:i-ii;   Luke   19 129-44;  John   12: 
12-19. 

Notes  : 

The  subject  offers  both  the  opportunity  and  necessity  for 
a  careful  piece  of  Synoptic  study.  The  three  Synoptic  ac- 
counts should  be  carefully  compared  together  and  with  the 
Johannine  account.  Note  especially  the  varying  versions  of 
the  cry  of  the  disciples  as  they  enter.  Then  the  significance 
of  the  incident  must  be  carefully  considered.  Was  it  pre- 
meditated, if  so,  why  did  Christ  abandon  his  invariable  habit 
of  avoiding  any  form  of  public  notice? 

Also  consider  carefully  the  significance  of  the  connected 
incident  of  the  cleansing  of  the  Temple. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  was  the  effect  of  the  entry  upon  the  mind  of  the 

disciples? 

2.  What  do  you  gather  was  the  original  form  of  the  dis- 

ciples' cry  as  they  entered? 

3.  What  significance  had  the  incident  for  Christ  himself? 

4.  What  relation  had  it  to  the  external  crisis  in  the  life 

of   Christ? 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

The  Triumphal  Entry 

It  would  be  easy  to  spend  much  time  on  the  details  of  the 
journey  to  Jerusalem,  and  of  the  last  week,  as  every  detail 
becomes  illuminating  when  the  main  line  of  thought  is  clear. 
But  we  must  concentrate  on  certain  episodes  which  throw 
light  on  the  development  of  the  external  crisis  or  on  the 
internal  crisis  in  the  mind  of  Christ.  First  there  is  the 
somewhat  puzzling  episode  of  Christ's  entry  into  Jerusalem. 
Several  things  may  be  gathered  from  the  story.  Following 
Mark's  account  we  have  first  the  sending  of  the  disciples  to 
borrow  the  ass's  colt.  Christ  apparently  intended  to  make 
his  entry  in  a  public  way.  For  reasons  of  his  own  he  now 
for  the  first  time  abandons  his  habit  of  avoiding  public  notice. 
In  the  same  account  we  have,  not  the  great  crowds  of 
Matthew,  but  the  band  of  followers  announcing  his  entry  in 
words  which  hail  the  Kingdom  rather  than  the  Messiah — 
"Hosanna,  blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord 
(implying  nothing  definite),  blessed  be  the  coming  kingdom  of 
our  father  David"   (Mark  11:9-10). 

According  to  Mark  nothing  happens  on  that  day,  but  Christ 
spends  the  night  with  the  Twelve  at  Bethany.  Hence  appar- 
ently, the  entry  was  an  incident  in  itself,  intended  to  draw 
attention  to  Christ.  On  the  next  day  occurs  the  incident  of 
the  fig  tree,  which  we  shall  take  up  in  the  next  chapter,  and 
the  cleansing  of  the  Temple.  According  to  Matthew,  the 
entry  had  attracted  the  attention  of  the  temple  authorities 
already.  Now  the  daring  attack  upon  the  priest's  most  lucra- 
tive source  of  income,  the  system  of  temple  exchange,  not 
only  attracts  attention,  but  makes  Christ  a  dangerous  person 
in  the  eyes  of  the  ruling  class.  It  is  a  tragic  thing  to  think 
of  Christ  looking  once  more  upon  the  courts  of  that  house, 
which  he  had  come  up  to  long  ago  with  such   dreams  and 

in 


ii2  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

such  an  intense  sense  of  the  child's  joy  in  his  Father's 
house.  Now,  while  the  Father's  house  is  still  the  same  intense 
reality  to  him,  his  maturer  vision,  disillusioned,  sees  it  denied 
by  the  lust  and  craft  of  those  who  represented  God  before  the 
world. 

So  the  entry  was  sufficiently  striking  to  attract  the  atten- 
tion of  the  authorities  to  Christ,  to  make  the  people  in  the 
streets  ask  who  this  was,  and  to  raise  the  hopes  of  the  small 
band  of  followers  who  had  come  up  with  him  from  Galilee 
to  a  high  pitch,  although  it  is  possible  that  of  these  only  the 
Twelve  shared  the  secret  of  Christ's  Messiahship.  To  the 
rest,  as  to  the  Jerusalem  crowds,  he  was  the  prophet  from 
Nazareth,  possibly  even  Elias  the  forerunner,  coming  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  to  announce  the  near  approach  of  the  King- 
dom. 

Then  the  cleansing  of  the  Temple  immediately  following, 
whether  premeditated  like  the  entry,  or  an  act  of  generous 
indignation,  served  to  rouse  the  cold  and  calculating  anger 
of  the  priests,  the  Sadducees,  the  ruling  class,  a  far  more 
deadly  anger  than  the  theological  hatred  of  the  Pharisees. 

By  these  two  acts  Christ  must  have  felt  that  the  die  was 
cast,  he  had  crossed  his  Rubicon,  and  could  not  retreat.  He 
felt  that  the  final  crisis  would  come  in  a  very  short  time, 
a  matter  of  a  few  days  or  even  hours.  Hence  he  avoids  Jeru- 
salem at  night  until  the  Paschal  night.  There  were  instruc- 
tions for  his  disciples,  other  reasons  it  may  be,  we  cannot  tell, 
but  the  pathetic  story  of  Mary's  alabaster  box  and  the  tragic 
significance  which  Jesus  attached  to  that  act  of  love  shows 
how  he  felt  the  last  shadow  closing  over  him. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
The  Withered  Fig  Tree 


STUDY  XIX 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  21 :  18-22;  Mark  11 :  12-14,  20-25. 

Notes  : 

This  incident,  like  the  last,  again  calls  for  a  little  careful 
Synoptic  study.  The  result  of  the  comparison  between  Mark's 
earlier  narrative  and  Matthew's  should  prove  instructive.  It 
is  an  interesting  example  of  the  way  in  which  difficulties  arise 
from  misunderstanding.  The  great  thing  is  to  endeavor  to 
reconstruct,  from  Mark,  the  original  meaning  of  the  incident 
as  it  stands  related  to  what  was  passing  in  Christ's  mind 
and  in  the  mind  of  the  disciples.  It  illustrates  the  great 
divergence  between  them.  They  were  passionately  clinging 
to  the  faintest  signs  of  power  that  might  reassure  them  as 
to  Christ's  ability  to  bring  them  through  the  crisis  that  they 
felt  to  be  at  hand.  Christ  was  looking  at  the  thing  very  dif- 
ferently. He  saw  that  it  was  a  case  for  a  supreme  act  of 
faith ;  more  and  more  he  saw  that  everything  depended  on 
God,  and  that  the  great  thing  needed  in  order  that  God  might 
be  able  to  work  was  the  manifestation  of  God's  character. 
He  always  connects  the  answer  to  prayer  with  the  manifesta- 
tion of  God's  character.  So  for  him  it  is  waste  of  time  to 
pray  while  any  sense  of  personal  resentment  remains  in  the 
mind. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  inferences  may  be  drawn  from  a  comparison  of 

the  records  of  this  incident  in   Matthew  and   Mark 
respectively  ? 

2.  What  light  does  it  throw  upon  the  mind  of  Christ? 

3.  What  light  does   it  throw   upon  the  mind  of  the   dis- 

ciples? 

4.  What  does  Christ  mean  by  "this  mountain"? 


CHAPTER  XIX 

The  Withered  Fig  Tree 

On  the  day  of  the  cleansing  of  the  Temple  there  occurred 
an  incident  which  has  suffered  in  the  telling  from  the  want 
of  understanding  of  those  through  whom  the  record  has  been 
handed  down  to  us.  The  beginning  of  the  misunderstanding 
is  found  in  the  Synoptic  account  itself  as  it  passes  from 
Mark  to  Matthew. 

As  we  have  the  story  in  Mark,  early  in  the  morning  on  the 
way  from  Bethany  to  Jerusalem,  Christ  was  hungry  and, 
seeing  a  fig  tree,  went  up  to  it  in  the  hope  of  finding 
some  of  the  small  dried-up  fruit  of  the  previous  year  still 
adhering  to  the  boughs.  He  found  none,  uttered  the  strange 
words  which  the  disciples  heard  and  noticed,  and  passed  on 
his  way.  Then  came  the  excitement  of  the  day  of  cleansing 
the  Temple,  and  in  the  darkness  of  evening  they  returned  to 
Bethany.  Passing  by  the  same  tree  the  next  morning,  they 
noticed  that  it  had  withered  since  the  previous  morning,  and 
Peter,  ever  quick  to  seize  the  significance  of  signs,  pointed  it 
out  to  Christ.  It  is  from  Peter's  words  that  we  have  taken 
our  cue,  and  ever  since  the  incident  has  been  known  as  the 
cursing  of  the  fig  tree.  In  Matthew  we  find  several  signifi- 
cant changes.  The  remark  "it  was  not  the  season  of  figs"  has 
been  dropped;  instead  of  a  day  and  night  elapsing  between  the 
utterance  of  the  words  and  the  discovery  that  the  tree  had 
withered,  we  are  shown  the  fig  tree  shriveling  at  once  before 
the  eyes  of  the  astonished  disciples,  and  the  whole  incident 
has  assumed  the  character  which  has  so  distressed  and  puzzled 
commentators  ever  since. 

The  incident,  with  the  remarkable  saying  of  Christ  to  Peter 
which  follows  it  in  Mark,  has  been  chosen  as  illustrating  that 
side  of  Christ's  experience  which  we  are  specially  occupied 
with  in  this  study.    We  have  already  seen  the  external  events 

115 


n6  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

shaping  the  crisis  for  Christ.  He  had  wept  as  he  entered  the 
city.  There  had  come  upon  him  a  sense  of  the  irrevocable- 
ness  of  the  crisis.  He  felt  that  they  did  not,  would  not, 
recognize  the  time  of  their  visitation.  Jerusalem  and  the 
Temple  were  the  center  of  all  the  prophets'  visions.  No  one 
had  yet  thought  of  a  Kingdom  of  God  of  which  Jerusalem 
would  not  be  the  center  and  the  seat  of  power.  So  the  refusal 
of  Jerusalem  to  recognize  the  Messiah  is  the  great  tragedy 
that  oppressed  the  mind  of  Christ  during  these  days.  It  is 
with  this  problem  that  he  was  wrestling  as  he  passed  along 
the  way  to  and  from  Bethany.  The  things  of  the  outward 
life,  as  so  often  for  the  prophet,  were  but  symbols  of  the 
inner  struggle.  So  the  incident  of  the  fig  tree,  slight  in  itself, 
is  full  of  significance  for  Christ:  the  trifling  disappointment 
merges  into  the  more  awful  weight  of  sorrow  and  disappoint- 
ment at  the  corrupt  and  hardened  priesthood  and  blind  people, 
the  unconscious  tree  becomes  the  symbol  to  the  over-wrought 
mind  of  Christ  of  the  fruitless  nation,  and  the  words  of 
mysterious  presage  and  doom  are  pronounced,  not  upon  the 
tree,  but  upon  that  of  which  the  tree  was  the  symbol.  So 
Christ  disburdens  in  utterance  some  of  the  weight  upon  his 
spirit,  and  passes  on,  while  the  disciples  listen,  knowing 
nothing  of  his  mysterious  struggle. 

Then  a  day  and  a  night  pass  and  some  cause  which  might 
have  been  perfectly  natural  and  explicable  brought  about  the 
rapid  drooping  and  sickness  of  the  tree.  Peter  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  state  of  the  tree,  and  remarks  that  Christ  had 
"cursed"  it,  a  thoroughly  Oriental  way  of  regarding  the  matter. 
Evidently  the  disciples  were  feeling  the  tension  of  the  situa- 
tion ;  the  cleansing  of  the  Temple,  like  the  triumphal  entry, 
would  have  added  to  their  expectations,  and  they  were  on 
the  watch  for  every  sign  of  miraculous  power  upon  which  to 
stay  their  hopes. 

But  the  significance  of  the  incident  for  Christ  is  very 
different.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  simplicity  with  which 
from  the  beginning  Christ  realized  the  things  of  the  spirit 
had  never  left  him,  but  had  combined  with  the  maturity  of 
his  powers  to  give  decision  of  action  flowing  from  clear 
insight.  With  this  simplicity  he  sees  things  in  a  perspective, 
where  greatness  and  smallness  are  measured  by  other  than 
worldly  scales.  Events  that  seem  trivial  are  fraught  for  him 
with  portent,  with  divine  messages.    The  simplest  happenings 


THE  WITHERED  FIG  TREE  117 

of  daily  life  are  the  expression  of  his  Father's  mind  and  will 
to  him.  So  here,  where  Peter  saw  only  a  display  of  power 
which  would  be  needed  in  dealing  with  a  rebellious  opposition, 
Jesus  saw  a  touching  proof  that  the  Father  was  watching  his 
path  and  knew  his  struggles.  He  accepted  the  withering  of 
the  fig  tree  as  a  confirmation  of  his  faith  and  a  sign  of 
God's  approval  of  the  spirit  with  which  he  was  facing  the  situ- 
ation. 

There  are  two  distinct  elements  in  the  situation,  both  of 
which  are  missed  by  the  usual  way  of  approaching  this  inci- 
dent as  a  "miracle  of  judgment." 

First,  Christ  was  feeling  profoundly  the  barrier  which  the 
refusal  of  Jerusalem  to  recognize  him  raised  in  the  way  of 
the  coming  of  the  Kingdom.  His  death  might  avail  to  remove 
it,  but  as  things  stood  he  was  facing  this  tremendous  moun- 
tain mass,  not  only  Jewish  unbelief,  but  the  whole  world- 
order,  Rome  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  behind  the  little  Jewish 
state,  all  blocking  his  solitary  way,  his  desperate  way  of  faith. 
Who  could  move  this  mountain  ?  God  could,  and  the  incident 
is  seized  upon  by  Christ  as  a  sign  of  God's  power  at  work 
for  him,  a  confirmation  of  his  faith  that  is  full  of  precious 
comfort  and  refreshment. 

Secondly,  there  is  the  personal  element.  He  was  being 
rejected  personally,  there  was  a  personal  hatred  that  he  could 
see  growing  against  him.  The  closing  part  of  this  memorable 
saying  shows  that  already,  before  ever  the  Cross  is  reached, 
that  spirit  that  had  said  "be  ye  therefore  merciful  as  your 
Father  is  merciful,"  and  that  breathed  the  prayer  of  for- 
giveness on  the  Cross  itself,  is  meeting  the  personal  hatred 
with  forgiveness.  Christ  connects  the  working  of  God's 
power,  which  for  him  expressed  itself  in  the  unexpected 
withering  of  the  fig  tree,  with  a  spirit  of  personal  forgive- 
ness which  was  for  him  the  expression  of  God's  character. 
So  the  incident  throws  strange  and  unexpected  and  pathetic 
light  on  the  struggle  of  Christ's  heroic  soul,  as  he  fares  on 
into  the  shadow  of  the  towering  mass  that  blocks  his  path. 
"Have  faith  in  God"  is  the  attitude  of  his  own  spirit,  "for- 
give" is  the  deepest  feeling  underlying  the  passion  that  had 
spent  itself  in  that  act  of  cleansing  the  Temple. 


CHAPTER  XX 
The  Last  Crisis.    The  Supper  and  Afterwards 


STUDY  XX 

Passages  for  Daily  Study  : 
Matt.  26:1-35;  Mark  14:1-31;  Luke  22:1-38;   I   Cor.   11: 
23-25. 

Notes  : 

There  is  little  to  be  said  here  except  what  will  be  found  in 
the  chapter.  I  have  not  said  much  about  the  Supper  on 
purpose.  It  is  principally  what  follows  that  brings  out  the 
final  crisis  now  beginning  in  the  mind  of  Christ.  For  the 
understanding  of  this  the  passage  in  Luke  is  of  prime  im- 
portance. It  may  be  pointed  out  that  each  crisis  as  it  comes 
is  an  advance.  While  the  principles  of  the  first  struggle 
reappear,  yet  there  is  no  mere  repetition  of  the  same  con- 
flict, but  the  original  choice  is  tested  again  and  again  by 
fresh  circumstances.  Each  time  Christ  is  carried  further  into 
unknown  country,  so  to  speak,  in  his  steadfast  adherence  to 
the  will  of  God  as  he  knows  it.  Now  the  final  crisis  brings 
him  to  a  venture  which  staggers  the  mind  to  contemplate. 
We  do  not  yet  know,  the  Church  has  hardly  begun  to  know, 
all  that  was  involved  in  that  supreme  act  of  choice. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  may  be  gathered  from  the  narratives  of  the  Last 

Supper  as  to  Christ's  view  of  his  own  death  in  rela- 
tion to  the  Kingdom  of  God? 

2.  What  was  the  state  of  the  disciples'  mind  at  this  time? 

3.  Consider  the  meaning  of  Christ's  words  in  Luke  22 :  37, 

"the  things  concerning  me  have  an  end." 

4.  Consider    the   effect   of    Isaiah    53   upon    the   mind    of 

Christ  at  this  time. 


CHAPTER  XX 

The  Last  Crisis.     The  Supper  and 
Afterwards 

Events  now  began  to  move  quickly  to  the  end.  The  priests 
met  together  to  plan  some  way  in  which  Jesus  might  be 
quietly  removed.  The  great  difficulty  for  them  was  to  find 
an  ostensible  cause  for  a  legal  execution.  Meanwhile  Jesus 
felt  that  the  end  was  close  at  hand.  He  had  for  some  time 
before  been  aware  of  the  mind  of  Judas.  The  last  thing 
that  he  desired  to  arrange  was  an  opportunity  for  keeping 
the  Passover  quietly  with  his  disciples  in  Jerusalem.  Jesus 
had  friends  in  Jerusalem,  and  the  story  of  the  man  bearing 
the  pitcher  of  water  points  to  some  previous  arrangement 
made  by  Jesus  with  one  of  his  friends  in  the  city,  who  had 
put  his  guest  chamber  at  the  Master's  disposal  for  his  last 
supper.  The  secrecy  of  the  arrangement  shows  the  extreme 
danger  to  which  Christ  felt  himself  exposed  in  entering  the 
city. 

Then  comes  the  Supper.  It  is  immaterial  for  our  purpose 
to  discuss  the  exact  day  and  date  of  the  Last  Supper,  although 
it  is  clear  that  the  Synoptic  account  is  uncertain  on  the  point. 
We  are  concerned  only  with  what  we  may  learn  from  the 
records  of  the  mind  of  Christ  on  that  memorable  night. 
Luke,  who  seems  to  have  had  access  to  some  special  source 
of  information  for  the  whole  of  the  last  scenes  of  Christ's 
life,  here  gives  us  a  number  of  very  important  additional 
details  relating  to  the  conversation  after  the  Supper,  and 
one  of  the  sayings  of  Christ,  recorded  only  by  Luke,  takes 
us  deeper  into  the  experience  of  Christ  at  this  supreme 
moment  than  anything  else  perhaps  in  the  Gospels. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  Christ's  thought  of  his  death  as 
a  means  of  deliverance  for  those  who  were  marked  out  to 

121 


122  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

share  the  Kingdom  with  him,  also  of  his  sense  of  the  extreme 
nearness  of  the  Kingdom.  These  things  are  reflected  espe- 
cially in  the  words  with  which  Christ  gives  the  bread  and 
the  cup  to  the  disciples.  But  it  is  the  conversation  which 
follows,  as  Luke  gives  it,  which  guides  us  to  the  heart  of 
what  Christ  was  now  feeling. 

All  the  Evangelists  tell  us  of  the  heaviness  and  dismay- 
that  fell  on  Christ  immediately  after  the  Supper,  when  Judas 
had  gone  to  do  his  hateful  deed,  and  Christ  knew  that  the 
moments  were  numbered.  But  only  Luke  of  the  Synoptists 
has  preserved  in  these  sayings  which  he  gives  us  the  rapid 
passing  of  the  various  emotions  through  the  mind  of  Christ. 
We  have  again  a  picture  of  the  old  strife  breaking  out  in  the 
very  last  gloom — the  disciples  were  quarreling  about  places 
in  the  Kingdom.  A  wave  of  pity  surged  in  the  heart  of 
Christ  as  he  looked  at  them.  All  void  of  sympathy  and 
understanding  as  they  were,  still  dreaming  of  an  earthly 
kingdom  and  material  rewards,  yet  were  they  not  the  sole 
companions  of  his  struggles?  They  had  been  with  him  in  his 
trials,  his  Treipaa-fxol.  He  promises  them,  as  though  humoring 
them  like  children,  a  share  in  whatever  the  Father  had  given 
him.  But  almost  as  he  says  it  there  rushes  over  him  an 
overwhelming  sense  of  loneliness,  of  change.  It  finds  expres- 
sion in  those  mysterious  words  which  utterly  bafifled  his  dis- 
ciples and  have  remained  hidden  to  this  day,  perhaps.  He 
began  by  reminding  them  of  the  first  mission  when  both  he 
and  they  were  full  of  hope  and  expectation  that  the  Kingdom 
lay  just  before  them.  He  reminded  them  of  the  way  in 
which  they  had  been  received,  they  had  lacked  nothing,  so 
far  had  his  name  and  their  message  availed.  "Now,"  he  tells 
them,  "all  is  changed.  In  that  crisis  which  is  about  to  come 
upon  you,  you  will  be  cast  upon  your  own  resources.  If  you 
have  a  purse  take  it,  also  your  swords.  If  any  of  you  has 
no  sword  let  him  part  with  his  cloak  to  buy  one."  Then  come 
the  words  of  doom,  the  words  which  tell  us,  as  nothing  else 
can,  the  point  which  Christ  had  reached.  "For  I  say  unto 
you  that  that  must  yet  be  fulfilled  which  is  written  of  me — 
'And  he  was  numbered  among  the  transgressors' — for  the 
things  concerning  me  have  an  end." 

Christ  had  begun  his  mission  with  a  profound  spiritual  expe- 
rience in  which  his  relation  to  God  and  his  relation  to  the 
Kingdom  had  been  fully  revealed  to  him.     Upon  the  reality 


THE  SUPPER  AND  AFTERWARDS      123 

of  this  experience  he  had  staked  everything.  An  increasing 
sense  of  the  divergence  between  the  nature  of  the  Kingdom 
and  the  Messiah  as  it  was  revealed  to  him,  and  that  which  he 
found  around  him  in  the  popular  expectation  and  which  must 
to  some  extent  have  influenced  his  own  thoughts,  had  been 
growing  on  him  through  the  experiences  which  we  have  been 
trying  to  follow.  Now  the  influence  of  the  53rd  of  Isaiah  upon 
his  mind,  of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  appears  here  as 
the  final  point  of  divergence  is  reached — Messiah  numbered 
with  the  transgressors  !  What  did  such  an  unthinkable  posi- 
tion imply?  Christ  himself  saw  clearly,  as  he  always  did, 
and  sums  up  in  that  terrible  pregnant  sentence,  "the  things 
concerning  me  have  an  end."  At  last  he  had  come  there,  to 
the  point  of  final  surrender.  He  must  give  up  all  the  hopes 
that  the  prophets  had  built  up  round  the  glowing  picture  of 
a  reigning  and  triumphant  Messiah.  He  had  gradually  been 
realizing  how  much  would  have  to  go,  but  now  he  sees  it  all. 
It  is  all  at  an  end.  He  had  seen  the  rejection  and  disappoint- 
ment in  Galilee,  and  accepted  it  from  the  Father's  hand.  He 
had  heard  of  John's  death,  and  seen  that  God  did  not  inter- 
vene for  him,  and  had  drawn  from  that  pitiful  end  the  token, 
God's  token  for  him,  of  what  the  Son  of  Man  must  suffer. 
Then  he  had  seen  in  the  crowded  days  of  the  last  week  the 
hopelessness  of  Jerusalem,  the  slayer  of  the  prophets.  It 
could  not  be  that  a  prophet  should  perish  out  of  Jerusalem. 
Now  last  of  all,  as  Judas  goes  and  the  last  shades  gather  over 
him,  he  realizes  what  a  Messiah  executed  as  a  criminal  must 
mean  for  all  patriotic  hopes,  all  Jewish  dreams  of  an  earthly 
kingdom,  Zion  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  gorgeous  phantasies  of  the  apocalyptists.  He  had  to  let  it 
go,  and  what  those  words  cost  him  as  he  said  "the  things 
concerning  me  have  an  end,"  we  shall  never  know.  Paul 
speaks  of  the  self-emptying,  the  tcevdjais  of  Christ,  and  theo- 
logians have  discoursed  learnedly  thereon.  I  think  that  we 
get  something  of  its  real  meaning  here. 

Once  more  Christ  is  forced  out  into  solitude  to  fight  the  last 
fight  in  the  agony  of  Gethsemane. 


CHAPTER    XXI 
The  Last  Crisis.    Gethsemane 


STUDY  XXI 

Passages  for  Daily  Study  : 
Matt.  26 :  36-46 ;  Mark  14 :  32-42 ;  Luke  22 :  39-46 ;  Heb.  5 : 
7,8. 

Notes  : 

The  principal  thing  to  be  said  here  is  that  we  are  trying  to 
confine  ourselves  to  the  meaning  of  Christ's  experience  from 
the  historical  point  of  view.  The  larger  question  of  the  spir- 
itual and  universal  significance  of  it  all  will  come  up  at  the 
end. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  is  the  meaning  of  the  vision  in  Luke  22:43? 

2.  Why  does  Christ  speak  here  of  the  "cup"  rather  than 

the  "baptism"? 

3.  What  is  the   force  of  the  words  which  Mark  uses  to 

describe  Christ's  mental  state  at  this  point? 

4.  Where  does  the  central  point  of  the  whole  conflict  lie? 


CHAPTER  XXI 

The  Last  Crisis.      Gethsemane 

In  the  garden,  with  a  pathetic  longing  for  some  sympathy, 
Christ  took  the  three  who  had  been  closest  to  his  mind  to 
share  his  vigil.  His  words  to  them  show  what  he  sought  from 
them,  "watch  with  me."  Mark  uses  strong  and  unusual 
words  to  describe  the  tumult  and  oppression  that  now  fell 
upon  Christ's  soul.  The  old  landmarks  were  swept  away  with 
those  words  of  which  we  spoke  in  our  last  chapter.  It  was 
still  possible  to  withdraw,  to  step  away  quietly,  to  avoid  the 
final  trial.  But  he  could  not  do  that.  So  three  times  he 
faces  the  awful  choice,  shrinking  from  the  cup,  yet  resolute 
to  take  it.  He  seeks  some  answer,  some  token  from  the  Father 
to  show  him  if  there  is  any  other  way  than  this.  According 
to  Luke,  the  answer  is  a  vision  such  as  he  had  already  expe- 
rienced in  previous  crises.  It  is  a  vision  of  strength  for  the 
end,  not  a  revelation  of  any  alternative  issue. 

If  we  have,  in  our  previous  study  of  the  point  now  reached 
by  Christ,  in  any  way  followed  the  true  line  of  his  advance, 
we  must  realize  a  little  the  intense  agony  of  the  struggle  here. 
At  the  Temptations  the  issue  was  seen  dimly,  at  a  distance. 
Here  it  is  right  before  him,  over-shadowing  all  with  its  horror. 
He  must,  if  he  chooses  the  cup — that  well-known  prophetic 
figure  of  divine  wrath — go  forward  into  darkness.  He  must 
accept,  as  the  final  consequence  of  the  nation's  failure  to  per- 
ceive the  time  of  their  visitation,  the  shattering  of  his  own 
cherished  hopes  for  them  and  for  Jerusalem.  He  must  go 
out  like  a  criminal,  "numbered  with  the  transgressors."  The 
horror  of  the  tribulation  must  be  his  alone,  with  no  knowledge 
of  what  might  come  after.  The  agony  of  Christ's  spirit  is 
forever  stamped  upon  the  Gospel  records. 

In  this  study,  as  in  the  previous  and  the  following  one,  we 
are  dealing  with  a  subject  whose  issues  lie  in  the  spiritual,  as 

127 


128  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

well  as  in  the  historical  plane.  We  are  endeavoring  to  estimate 
it  from  the  historical  standpoint  first,  in  order  that  we  may 
more  truly  estimate  its  meaning  on  the  spiritual  plane.  Hence 
the  deliberate  avoidance  in  these  three  studies  of  any  dis- 
cussion of  the  larger  questions  that  naturally  arose  later, 
when  the  Church  began  to  solve  for  itself  the  question  of 
who  Christ  was  and  what  he  had  done. 


CHAPTER    XXII 
The  Cross 


STUDY  XXII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 
Matt.  27,  Mark  15,  Luke  23,  John  19. 

Notes  : 

In  attempting  to  study  the  Cross  and  its  meaning  from  the 
historical  point  of  view,  the  student  will  find  great  help  from 
a  pamphlet  by  T.  R.  Glover  entitled  "The  Death  of  Christ," 
and  also  from  Canon  Streeter's  article  "The  Historic  Christ" 
in  "Foundations."  I  have  said  very  little  here,  because  all 
the  implications  of  the  Cross  and  its  relation  to  Christ's 
actual  experience  have  already  been  gradually  worked  out. 
The  Cross  is  just  the  final  crisis,  the  narrow  door,  by  which 
Christ  himself  broke  through  into  the  newness  of  life  that 
Paul  speaks  of,  the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit. 

Questions  : 

1.  Compare  the  cry  on  the  Cross  in  Mark  15 :  34  with  that 

given  in  John  19:30. 

2.  What  is  implied  by  the  bystander's  remark  about  Elias 

in  Mark  15:  36? 

3.  Consider  the  meaning  of  Christ's  last  words  as  given 

in  Luke  2^  :  46. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

The  Cross 

We  come  now  to  the  Cross.  One  is  likely  to  read  the 
familiar  story  transfigured  by  the  golden  haze,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  victory.     But  the  poet's  words  are  true — 

"Brightness  may  emanate  in  heaven   from  thee, 
Here  thy  dread  symbol  only  shadow  yields." 

Stripped  of  the  glamor,  it  is  the  story  of  a  sordid  judicial 
crime  carried  out  with  mean  and  petty  cruelty  to  its  miser- 
able end.  There  is  no  brightness  on  the  historical  side,  only 
gloom.  The  darkness  into  which  Christ  entered  in  the  garden 
grows  more  intense,  until  the  cry  of  anguish  wrung  from  him 
on  the  Cross  tells  us  that  the  final  agony,  not  of  the  body 
but  of  the  mind,  is  upon  him.  The  cry  shows  that  still  through 
the  mockery  of  the  trial,  the  heartless  jibes  of  the  priests  at  his 
supposed  Messiahship,  even  the  half-suppressed  doubt  and  sus- 
pense of  the  bystanders  as  to  whether  Elias  may  yet  come  and 
turn  the  darkness  into  light,  he  clung  to  the  possibility  that 
God  might  intervene  in  some  way.  Although  his  will  had 
bowed  to  the  cup,  yet  his  heart  clung  to  a  hope  that  light 
might  break  at  the  last  moment. 

Xow,  his  strength  is  waning,  no  sign  appears  in  the  dark- 
ening sky.  He  feels  that  this  is  the  end,  and  the  passionate 
cry  of  brokenhearted  disappointment  breaks  from  him,  "Aly 
God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?"  The  word  given 
in  John  is  generally  taken  as  the  word  of  triumph,  the  expres- 
sion of  the  sense  of  completion.  But  I  cannot  help  feeling 
that  the  rerAeo-rai  has  been  reinterpreted,  like  so  much  else 
in  the  story  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  later  history.  It 
really  stands  for  the  final  surrender,  the  completion,  it  is 
true,  of  the  act  of  self-emptying,  the  answer,  as  it  were,  to 
that    other    utterance,    "the    things    concerning    me    have   an 

131 


132  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

end," TerAeoTcu — "It  is  all  over."  If  that  were  the  last  word 
it  would  be  strange.  But  the  true  note  of  triumph  does  not 
fail.  The  note  that  was  struck  in  Matt.  11:25  is  heard  once 
more,  and  is  the  prelude  to  the  Easter  song,  the  token  that 
the  Cross  is  not  the  end,  but  the  beginning.  After  the  cry  of 
anguish  has  been  uttered,  and  the  supreme  moment  of  con- 
flict has  passed,  the  words  come,  apparently  with  a  force  and 
strength  that  astonished  the  onlookers,  "Father,  into  thy 
hands  I  commend  my  spirit."  That  is  the  true  cry  of  victory. 
Christ  accepts  the  issue  of  the  Cross,  with  all  its  finality  and 
irrevocableness  on  the  one  side,  as  the  way  into  the  infinite 
possibilities  that  the  Father  might  have  on  the  other  side. 
It  might  be  resurrection,  it  must  be  vindication.  The  child 
who  found  his  home  in  the  Father's  house,  now  entrusts  his 
spirit,  having  done  all,  to  the  Father's  hands  in  faith.  The 
rest  is  with  the  Father. 


CHAPTER    XXIII 
The  Victory  of  the  Cross 


STUDY  XXIII 

Passages  for  Daily  Study: 

I   Peter   1:18-21;  2:21-25;   3:18;   Rom.  6:9,   10;   II   Cor. 
13:4;  Gal.  2  :  20. 

Notes  : 

There  are  a  great  many  questions  deliberately  left  un- 
touched in  summing  up.  The  object  is  that  we  may  concen- 
trate and  see  clearly  the  historical  relation  between  the 
development  of  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom  in  the  Hebrew 
prophets,  and  the  actual  life  and  death  of  Christ  as  the  climax 
of  this  process  of  development.  We  have  to  see  Christ,  not 
as  a  deus  ex  machina,  intervening  to  fulfil  the  prophets'  pre- 
dictions, but  as  the  heir  and  successor  of  the  prophets'  expe- 
riences and  traditions,  himself  involved  in  the  final  tragedy, 
working  out  God's  purpose  through  infinite  pain  and  sacrifice. 

Questions  : 

1.  What  aspects  of  the  death  of  Christ  did  the  early  Church 

seize  upon? 

2.  Consider   the   effect   of   the   death   of   Christ  upon   the 

Jewish  order  of  things. 

3.  Consider  the  meaning  of  St.  Peter's  words  "Christ  died 

to  bring  us  to  God,"  from  the  historical  point  of  view. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

The  Victory  of  the  Cross 

The  author  of  the  ist  epistle  of  Peter  went  to  the  root  of 
the  matter  when  he  said  "Christ  died  to  bring  us  to  God." 
Apart  from  all  theological  considerations  that  sentence  ex- 
presses the  experience  of  a  multitude  "that  no  man  can  num- 
ber." Paul  puts  it  in  another  way  when  he  says  "God  was 
in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself." 

That  is  now,  at  the  end  of  our  study,  the  question  for  us. 
What  did  Peter,  what  did  Paul  mean  when  they  said  these 
things?  Can  the  death  of  Christ  have  the  same  meaning  for 
us  in  our  modern  world? 

Now  it  is  a  fact  that  our  theology  was  for  the  most  part 
made  a  very  long  time  ago.  The  statements  which  today 
represent  authoritatively  the  Church's  belief  about  the  Person 
of  Christ  took  the  form  in  which  we  know  them,  nearly  fifteen 
centuries  ago.  Much  of  the  teaching  about  sin,  the  nature  of 
God,  and  the  effect  of  Christ's  death  in  relation  to  both,  rests 
upon  the  scholastic  theology  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  fact  that  a  thing  is  old  does  not  imply  that  it  cannot  be 
good,  and  indeed  the  persistence  and  vitality  of  the  creeds  and 
of  the  Church's  theology  shows  that  underneath  it  all  lies 
a  firm  basis  of  real  experience.  But  on  the  other  hand  the 
whole  witness  of  the  history  of  religion  cries  aloud  that  God 
moves,  that  His  way  is  to  go  on  to  ever  fresh  ways  of  unfold- 
ing His  eternal  life  in  the  world.  Christianity  itself  stands 
as  the  perpetual  witness  of  the  resistless  movement  of  the 
life  of  God  in  history.  If  Christianity  should  itself  prove 
false  to  the  very  elan  vital,  the  vital  impulse  that  gave  it  birth: 
it  must  be  left  behind. 

So  at  a  time  like  this,  when  the  cumulative  effect  of  nearly 
a  century  of  extraordinary  change  is  beginning  to  be  con- 
sciously felt,  the  best  discipline  is  to  go  back  to  the  historical 
facts  that  surround  the  birth  of  Christianity  and  read  them 
anew  in  the  light  of  fresh  historical  knowledge,  fresh  insight 

T  3  " 


136  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

into  personality  and  religious  psychology,  and  a  fresh  perspec- 
tive gained  from  the  study  of  comparative  religion. 

Our  study  has  been  a  mere  essay,  the  slightest  sketch  of 
such  a  survey.  But  it  has  at  least  given  us  a  point  of  view. 
We  have  seen  in  what  a  strange  and  tragic  sense  Christ  was 
the  heir  of  the  long  prophetic  line.  Prophecy,  although  not 
peculiar  to  Israel,  yet  had  a  unique  history  and  development 
among  the  Hebrew  people.  While  the  Greeks,  moving  along 
their  own  characteristic  line  of  development  produced  from 
the  infinite  multiplicity  of  tribal  sanctities,  year-demons,  earth 
and  corn  spirits,  and  what  not,  the  resplendent  figures  of  the 
Olympians,  an  eternal  joy  to  the  senses — the  Hebrew  prophets 
were  travailing  in  birth  through  the  pangs  of  the  catastrophes 
that  overwhelmed  their  nation,  to  bring  forth  the  loftiest 
conception  of  God  as  ethical  and  spiritual  beyond  all  sense- 
representation. 

There  were  three  great  things  that  marked  the  work  of  the 
prophets.  They  carried  the  conception  of  God  as  a  spiritual 
being  to  the  full  development  of  the  thought  of  Him  as  the 
Father,  not  only  of  the  people  of  Israel,  but  of  the  individual. 
They  carried  their  conception  of  God  as  holy  and  righteous 
into  national  and  individual  ethics,  and  made  the  synthesis  of 
religion  and  ethics  possible.  But  what  was  most  character- 
istic of  their  work  was  their  conception  of  a  state  of  things, 
a  kingdom,  in  which  the  character  of  God  and  His  relation 
to  His  people  would  be  fully  vindicated  in  the  world.  They 
thought  of  God  as  intervening  to  bring  this  desirable  state, 
this  age  to  come,  into  being.  These  three  elements  cannot  be 
separated,  and  we  are  only  now  beginning  to  understand  how 
profoundly  the  last  of  the  three  gathered  up  and  embodied 
the  others  and  became  the  central  and  vital  thing  in  Jewish 
life  and  thought  at  the  time  when  Christ  lived.  Now  all  three 
were  essentially  Jewish,  as  they  found  expression  in  the  period 
we  have  been  studying.  For  Paul  to  be  able  even  to  ask  the 
question,  "Is  God  the  God  of  the  Jews  only,  is  He  not  also 
the  God  of  the  Gentiles?"  marked  an  advance  whose  cost  and 
secret  is  the  very  subject  of  our  study.  In  Christ's  time  and 
in  his  environment  God  was  exclusively  the  God  of  the  Jews. 
To  enjoy  the  blessings  of  God's  favor  it  was  necessary  for 
a  Gentile  to  become  a  member  of  the  commonwealth  of  Israel. 
To  enjoy  the  future  Kingdom  that  seemed  so  near  at  hand 
it  was  necessary  to  be  a  Jew.    Paul  expresses  the  logical  point 


THE  VICTORY  OF  THE  CROSS         137 

of  view  of  a  Jew  towards  the  GentileS  among  whom  he  lived 
when  he  reminds  the  Ephesians  that  before  they  became 
Christians  they  were  strangers  from  the  polity  of  Israel,  that 
at  best  they  could  only  be  tolerated  sojourners  under  the 
covenants  of  the  promise  of  the  Jew,  that  they  had  no  hope, 
and  were  without  anything  that  could  really  be  called  God. 
How  was  the  change,  even  in  the  point  of  view,  made  pos- 
sible? How  could  Paul  come  even  to  think  otherwise?  Again 
we  come  back  to  Christ.  God's  thoughts  are  His  acts.  In 
Christ  we  have  found  this  movement  of  liberation  wrought 
out  in  the  infinite  travail  of  a  human  experience.  We  have 
seen  Christ,  gathering  up  in  one  personality  of  unique  moral 
simplicity,  purity,  and  intensity,  these  three  great  prophetic 
things.  The  Fatherhood  of  God  was  not  new.  It  was  what 
Christ  made  of  it  in  his  own  experience  that  was  new.  Christ's 
ethics  were  the  ethics  of  the  prophets,  but  the  spirit,  the 
motive  behind  the  ethics,  was  new  and  revolutionary.  Yet 
Christ's  horizon  is  Jewish,  his  mission  is  only  to  the  lost 
sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.  His  thoughts  of  the  Kingdom 
and  the  Messiah,  although  differing  widely  from  those  gen- 
erally held  in  his  time,  were  still  Jewish.  He  loved  Jerusalem, 
he  loved  the  Temple,  passionately.  His  love  for  Israel  was 
such  as  found  an  echo  in  the  words  of  his  greatest  follower 
when  he  said,  "I  could  wish  myself  accursed  from  Christ  for 
my  brethren's  sake,  my  kinsmen  according  to  the  flesh." 

Yet  we  see  him  forced  by  his  own  unfaltering  choice  and 
vision  of  the  will  of  God  to  a  point  where  he  must  give  the 
alabaster  box  to  be  broken,  that  the  treasure  might  be  liber- 
ated. In  no  other  way,  seemingly,  could  the  spirit  that  had  so 
far  wrought  in  the  history  of  prophecy  be  set  free  from  the 
Jewish  environment  and  expression.  We  see  God,  cabined 
and  cribbed,  as  it  were,  within  the  narrow  bounds  of  Judaism, 
liberated  by  His  own  act  in  Christ,  by  what  seemed  the 
final  tragedy  of  the  Cross.  It  was  the  end  of  Jewish  national 
hopes,  it  was  the  end  of  prophetic  pictures  of  the  Jewish 
Messiah,  it  was  in  the  deepest  sense  the  losing  of  life,  far 
more  than  mere  physical  death.  That  was  the  side  of  the 
Cross  that  Christ  faced,  as  we  have  watched  him  through  the 
successive  crises  of  his  life  approach  it. 

But  it  was  the  beginning  of  the  new  creation,  where  the 
"spirit  of  Jesus,"  liberated  from  the  womb  of  Judaism,  was 
free  to  work  the  miracle,  the  "greater  things,"  that  the  world 


138  CHRIST  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

saw  with  amazement  during  the  first  century  of  Christianity. 

That  is  the  victory  of  the  Cross  looked  at  in  the  broadest 
way.  There  is  much  more,  but  some  of  it  lies  outside  such 
a  study  as  this  altogether,  and  some  of  it  belongs  to  a  book 
that  will  follow  this  and  take  up  the  Resurrection  and  its  con- 
sequences. 

But  the  great  point  is  that  the  Cross  itself  is  the  victory. 
All  the  significance  of  the  Resurrection,  however  we  regard  it, 
is  drawn  from  the  Cross. 

There  Christ  lost  his  life  and  found  it.  There  God  slowly 
working  through  the  ages,  through  the  travail  of  man's  spirit, 
at  last  in  Christ  found  an  instrument  in  which  He  could 
perfectly  express  Himself  even  under  full  and  true  human 
and  historical  conditions.  And  in  dying,  God  in  Christ  entered 
into  the  world's  pangs  in  a  new  way,  so  that  we  may  never 
again  think  of  God  merely  enthroned  above  between  the 
cherubim.  Henceforth  we  see  God  in  the  self-emptying  of 
Christ  on  the  Cross,  we  see  God  under  the  weight  of  national 
and  individual  sin,  suffering  its  consequences,  in  no  mere 
official  and  unreal  sense,  but  really  losing  everything.  We 
think  of  God  in  a  new  way,  and  see  that  Christ  did  die  to 
bring  us  to  God.    We  find  God  there. 

Epilogue 

"Except   a   corn    of   wheat    fall    into    the   ground   and    die   it 
abideth  alone,  but  if  it  die,  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit." 

"Thus  hath  He  unto  death  His  beauty  given : 
And  so  of  all  which  form  inheriteth 

The  fall  doth  pass  the  rise  in  worth ; 
For  birth  hath  in  itself  the  germ  of  death 

But  death  hath  in  itself  the  germ  of  birth. 

It  is  the  falling  acorn  buds  the  tree, 
The  falling  rain  that  bears  the  greenery, 

The  fern  plants  moulder  when  the  ferns  arise. 

For  there  is  nothing  lives  but  something  dies, 
And  there  is  nothing  dies  but  something  lives. 

Till  skies  be  fugitives, 
Till  Time,  the  hidden  root  of  change,  updries, 
Are  Birth  and  Death  inseparable  on  earth ; 
For  they  are  twain  yet  one,  and  Death  is  Birth." 


Appendix 


APPENDIX 

The  following  passages  are  selected  from  the  Jewish  Apoc- 
alyptic literature  of  the  last  century  B.  C.  and  the  first  century 
A.  D.  as  illustrating  the  nature  of  current  Messianic  expecta- 
tions : 
(a)  Parables  of  Enoch  (i  Enoch  37-71),  circ.  90-60  B.  C. 

"On  that  day  mine  Elect  One  shall  sit  on  the  throne  of 

glory 
And  shall  try  their  works, 
And  their  places  of  rest  shall  be  innumerable. 
And  their  souls  shall  grow   strong  within  them  when 

they  see  mine  Elect  ones, 
And  those  who  have  called  upon  my  Glorious  Name : 
Then  will  I  cause  mine  Elect  One  to  dwell  among  them. 
And  I  will  transform  the  heaven  and  make  it  an  eternal 

blessing  and  light: 
And  I  will  transform  the  earth  and  make  it  a  blessing:" 

(1  Enoch  45:  3,  4.) 
"And  there  I  saw  One  who  had  a  head  of  days, 
And  his  head  was  white  like  wool, 
And  with  him  was  another  being  whose  countenance 

had  the  appearance  of  a  man, 
And  his  face  was  full  of  graciousness,  like  one  of  the 
holy  angels. 
And  I  asked  the  angel  who  went  with  me  and  shewed  me  all 
the  hidden  things,  concerning  that  Son  of  Man  who  he  was, 
and  whence  he  was,  and  why  he  went  with  the  Head  of 
Days  ?    And  he  answered  and  said  unto  me : 

This  is  the  Son  of  Man  who  hath  righteousness, 

With  whom  dwelleth   righteousness, 

And  who  revealeth  all  the  treasures  of  that  which  is 

hidden, 
Because  the  Lord  of  Spirits  had  chosen  him,    .    .    . 

And  this  Son  of  Man  whom  thou  hast  seen 
Shall  put  down  the  kings  and  mighty  from  their  seats, 
etc."     (1  Enoch  46:  1-4.) 

141 


142  APPENDIX 

"And  at  that  hour  the  Son  of  Man  was  named 

In  the  presence  of  the  Lord  of  Spirits, 

And  his  name  before  the  Head  of  Days. 

Yea,  before  the  sun  and  the  signs  were  created, 

Before  the  stars  of  the  heaven  were  made 

His  name  was  named  before  the  Lord  of  Spirits." 

(i  Enoch  48:  23.) 
"And  they  shall  be  downcast  of  countenance, 

And  pain  shall  seize  them, 

When  they  see  that  Son  of  Man 

Sitting  on  the  throne  of  his  glory. 

And  the  kings  and  the  mighty  and  all  who  possess  the 
earth 

Shall  bless  and  exalt  and  glorify  him  who  rules  over  all, 

Who  was  hidden. 

For  from  the  beginning  the  Son  of  Alan  was  hidden, 

And  the  Most  High  preserved  him  in  the  presence  of 
his  might, 

And  revealed  him  to  the  elect."     (1  Enoch  62:  5-7). 

(b)  2  Baruch  (circ.  50-100  A.  D.). 

"And  it  shall  come  to  pass  after  these  things,  when  the  time 
of  the  advent  of  the  Messiah  is  fulfilled,  that  he  shall  return 
in  glory.  Then  all  who  have  fallen  asleep  in  hope  of  him  shall 
rise  again."     (2  Bar.  30:  1,  2.) 

"And  it  will  come  to  pass  when  the  time  of  its  consummation 
that  it  should  fall  has  approached,  then  the  principate  of  my 
Messiah  will  be  revealed,  which  is  like  the  fountain  and  the 
vine,  and  when  it  is  revealed  it  will  root  out  the  multitude  of 
its  host.  The  last  leader  of  that  time  will  be  left  alive,  when 
the  multitude  of  his  hosts  will  be  put  to  the  sword,  and  he 
will  be  bound,  and  they  will  take  him  up  to  Mt.  Zion,  and 
my  Messiah  will  convict  him  of  all  his  impieties,  and  will 
gather  and  set  before  him  all  the  works  of  his  hosts.  And 
afterwards  he  will  put  him  to  death  and  protect  the  rest  of 
my  people  which  shall  be  found  in  the  place  which  I  have 
chosen.  And  his  principate  will  stand  for  ever,  until  the 
world  of  corruption  is  at  an  end."     (2  Bar.  39:7 — 40:3.) 

(c)  4  Ezra    (circ.  60-100  A.  D.). 

"For  behold  the  days  come,  and  it  shall  be  when  the  signs 
which  I  have  foretold  unto  thee  come  to  pass,  then  shall  the 
city  that  is  now  invisible  appear,  and  the  land  which  is  now 
concealed  be  seen.    And  whosoever  is  delivered  from  the  pre- 


APPENDIX  145 

dieted  evils,  the  same  shall  see  my  wonders.  For  my  Son  the 
Messiah  shall  be  revealed,  together  with  those  who  are  with 
him,  and  shall  rejoice  the  survivors  four  hundred  years.  And 
it  shall  be,  after  these  years,  that  my  Son  the  Messiah  shall 
die,  and  all  in  whom  there  is  human  breath.  Then  shall  the 
world  be  turned  into  the  primaeval  silence  seven  days,  like  as 
at  the  first  beginnings,  so  that  no  man  is  left."  (4  Ezra  7: 
26-30.) 

"And  as  for  the  lion  whom  thou  didst  see  roused  from  the 
wood  and  roaring,  and  speaking  to  the  eagle  and  reproving 
him  for  his  unrighteousness  and  all  his  deeds,  as  thou  hast 
heard.  This  is  the  Messiah,  whom  the  Most  High  has  kept 
unto  the  end  of  the  days,  who  shall  spring  from  the  seed  of 
David,  and  shall  come  and  speak  unto  them  ...  at  the 
first  he  shall  set  them  alive  for  judgment;  and  when  he  hath 
rebuked  them  he  shall  destroy  them."     (4  Ezra  12:  31-33. ) 

"And  it  came  to  pass  after  seven  days  that  I  dreamed  a 
dream  by  night :  and  I  beheld,  and  lo !  there  arose  a  violent 
wind  from  the  sea,  and  stirred  all  its  waves.  And  I  beheld, 
and  lo !  the  wind  caused  to  come  up  out  of  the  heart  of  the 
seas  as  it  were  the  form  of  a  man.  And  I  beheld,  and  lo ! 
this  Man  flew  with  the  clouds  of  heaven.  And  whenever  he 
turned  his  countenance  to  look,  everything  seen  by  him 
trembled ;  and  whithersoever  the  voice  went  out  of  his  mouth, 
all  that  heard  his  voice  melted  away,  as  the  wax  melts 
when  it  feels  the  fire.  And  after  this  I  beheld,  and  lo !  there 
was  gathered  together  from  the  four  winds  of  heaven  an 
innumerable  multitude  of  men  to  make  war  against  the  Man 
that  came  up  out  of  the  sea.  And  I  beheld  and  lo !  he  cut  out 
for  himself  a  great  mountain  and  flew  up  upon  it.  .  .  .  And 
lo !  when  he  saw  the  assault  of  the  multitude  as  they  came  he 
neither  lifted  his  hand  nor  held  spear  nor  any  warlike  weapon ; 
but  I  saw  only  how  he  sent  out  of  his  mouth  as  it  were  a 
fiery  stream,  and  out  of  his  lips  a  flaming  breath,  and  out  of 
his  tongue  he  shot  forth  a  storm  of  sparks.  And  these  were 
all  mingled  together — the  fiery  stream,  the  flaming  breath, 
and  the  storm,  and  fell  upon  the  assault  of  the  multitude  which 
was  prepared  to  fight  and  burned  them  all  up." 

(4  Ezra  13  :  1-11.) 

"And  I  said :  O  Lord  my  Lord  shew  me  this :  wherefore 
I  have  seen  the  Man  coming  up  from  the  heart  of  the  sea. 
And  he  said  unto  me :  Just  as  one  can  neither  seek  out  nor 


144  APPENDIX 

know  what  is  in  the  deep  of  the  sea,  even  so  can  no  one  upon 
earth  see  my  Son  or  those  that  are  with  him,  but  in  the  time 
of  his  day."     (4  Ezra  13:51-52.) 

[The  above  passages  may  be  found  in  their  context  in  Vol. 
II  of  the  Oxford  Apocrypha  and  Pseudepigrapha  of  the  O.  T. 
ed.  Charles.] 


» 


Date  Due 

9-rfr-™ 

«UNW»«««n^i^^ 

1 

vn7?    J  '] 

':>< 

<f 

